All bets are on....
by GoldenSilence
Summary: Chapter 7 is up! Nearly Headless Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves all have their own opinions(not to mention their own bets) on who in Gryffindor is going to get together. Harry/Hermione? Ron/Hermione?Someone else/Hermione? Now that would be telling.;)
1. Default Chapter

@All Bets Are On..@ (1/?)The bet is made by:GoldenSilence e-mail:flipgal14@yahoo.com category:Romance/humor keywords:Hermione/Ron, Hermione/Harry, Hermione/George spoilers:PS/SS,CoS, GoF rating:PG summary: Nearly Headless Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves all have their own opinions(not to mention their own bets) of who in gryffindor is going to get together. Harry/Hermione? Ron/Hermione?Someone else/Hermione? Now that would be telling.;) disclaimer:This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. A/N=The future chapters will focus more on the different pairings..that kind of thing. Hope you enjoy and as all always, reviews and opinions are most definitely nice to get! Oh yeah, and I can't seem to remember what the Hufflepuff's ghost name is..I thought it was the fat friar or something like that, but I'm probably way off, right? I also have a warning for any major Krum fanatics-he does get slightly dissed in this chapter. No harm meant by it, of course!In fact, if I rather like Hermione/Krum fanfics myself. -----  
  
Nearly Headless Nick (or as he much preferred, Nicholas De Mimsy-Porpington) dipped his toes timidly into the prefect bathroom's pool to test the temperature of the water. Perfect. Putting his hands together Nick prepared to make a graceful dive. He ended up making a loud (and much less graceful) bellyflop instead.  
  
Every one in awhile a ghost deserves a little pampering at other's expense. Nick had made sure to come early in the evening while the students were having their dinner-eight o'clock to be exact-just to make sure none of the prefect's bothered to come in.   
  
Whenever they saw him taking a bath in the pool, they always had to bother him with ignorant questions. "Why do you wear your clothes when you bathe? " was the most popular of them all, followed by "Can you actually feel the water? Or do you just feel air since it goes right through you? "   
  
Didn't they learn anything at Hogwarts anymore? He was a GHOST. It wasn't as if he could just step out of his clothes. Ghost's wardrobes were pretty much confined to what they had worn the day they died. Just look at the bloody baron, for goodness sakes! Hmpph. Those students could use a good lesson in tact.  
  
Nick sank into the bubbling and boiling water with a sigh. He began using a bar of soap to scrub at his back (or his chest, it's hard to differentiate between the two when you're transparent.) After thoroughly lathering himself, he back stroked across the length of the pool, spitting water out of his mouth like a fountain.  
  
He had been an excellent swimmer in his day. Not that he had much choice. When one gets thrown into a moat, one becomes an excellent swimmer very quickly. Nick swam a couple of laps back and forth across the pool before deciding to get out.  
  
There was a batch of fluffy towels in the corner but he didn't reach for one. Towels really wouldn't do a ghost any good, going through him and all..he would just have to air dry.  
  
Nick was halfway across the room when he spotted Moaning Myrtle sitting three plastic recliners away calmly staring at him from over the top of Witch's Weekly.  
  
"Ahhhhh! "   
  
Forgetting he was a ghost and therefor had nothing to worry about in the naked department, Nick swiped his pink polka dotted bath cap off his head and placed it strategically in front of him.  
  
"What in Merlin's name are you doing here? In a BOY'S bathroom, might I add? "  
  
Moaning Myrtle marked her place (twenty five ways to get rid of those pesky zits) in her magazine before looking up at Nick again.  
  
"Oh, I moved from the girl's bathroom, didn't you hear? No I suppose you didn't. No one probably even notices I've left. It's just like when I died. "   
  
Myrtle gave a little sniffle and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.   
  
Nick groaned. Not this again.  
  
Myrtle had almost once gotten to be Hufflepuff's ghost before the fat friar came along. The job position had been turned out of Myrtle's favor when Proffessor McGonagall had said if she had to hear moaning myrtle moan three meals a day in Hogwart's Great Hall as Hufflepuff's ghost, she would have to make it a habit to begin wearing ear muffs.   
  
No matter if she was ghost or person, Myrtle had to be the singularly most annoying around. Nick, anticipating being stuck while Myrtle went into a three hour "oh pity poor me " session (she had been known to do as much before) tried his hand at comforting her.  
  
"Now now, I'm sure all the first years are simply howling at the loss right this minute. "  
  
Moaning Myrtle looked at him hopefully through a few tears. "You think so? "  
  
Nick handed her one of the conviently nearby towels to blow her nose with. She did with a loud honk.  
  
"Errm. Sure. Your companionship in the bathroom, is- I'm positive-sorely missed."   
  
Nick fibbed, not mentioning the conversation he had heard earlier between two of the first years.  
  
( "Is Moaning Myrtle really gone at last?" "Yep. Finally I can go in there without her hanging over the edge of the stall to whine at me. " "Eww..she didn't well.. actually watch you go the bathroom, did she?" )  
  
Myrtle smiled slightly. "I did always keep the bathroom floor nice and clean for their feet by overflowing the sinks" (and the toilets, thought Nick. )   
  
She stared at Nick in a way that made him most uncomfortable. "You don't have to do that. You're a ghost."  
  
"Do what?" Nick asked.   
  
He wondered if it would be polite to simply run out of the prefect's bathroom as fast as he could. Moaning Myrtle was really starting to scare him. Or continuing to scare him, seeing as she had sort of scared him all along.  
  
Moaning Myrtle pointed at his bath cap still placed in front of him.   
  
"That. You can't see anything anyway." She said this a bit too wistfully for Nick's taste.  
  
"Oh." Nick felt foolish and stupid. Of course you couldn't!   
  
After a few minutes of trying to find somewhere to put his bathcap, he gave up (he couldn't very well put back on his head and he didn't have any pockets on his elaborate outfit) and clenched it at his side in one hand. Nick had completly lost his usually dignified air..though it was hard to have one to begin with when you sported a pink polka dot bathing cap and a rubber ducky.  
  
"So.. why did you move here anyway? " asked Nick, trying to draw attention away from his aformentioned accessories. Just imagine if the word got out!The house elves would probably try and steal his rubber ducky, not to mention that he would lose whatever chance he had of joining the headless hunt..unless they wanted him as a jester.  
  
"Well-I wanted to take the boy's bathroom, but it's already haunted," said Myrtle.   
  
Probably to see Harry. Poor guy. I feel sorry for him. Better tell him the cost is clear so he knows he doesn't have to avoid the bathroom like it's Madame Pomfrey's infirmary, thought Nick.   
  
"So I took the prefect's bathroom instead" Myrtle continued, "It has much better scenery."  
  
She put the empasize on "much" and gave a little very uncharacteristic giggle. Nicholas knew exactly what "scenery" she was talking about, alright. Twenty or so different boys coming into the baths each day. Myrtle must be overflowing with joy. Good, maybe now she would stop complaining loud enough for the whole four floors below her to hear.  
  
"I do miss the girl's gossip though. And that nice chap that used to visit-Harry."  
  
Nicholas, in spite of himself, perked up at the words "gossip" and "Harry". He never found out a whole lot about the comings and goings on with Hogwart's students. Not even the ones in his own house. He roomed with the fat friar and the fat friar didn't exactly have tons of juicy new to share. Not to mention that most of Hogwart's students would have a swallowed a filbuster firecracker whole before telling him anything. In spite of this, he had (foolishly, he realized now) made a bet with Peeves the night before regarding a rumor Peeve's had heard.   
  
"Gossip? What gossip? "  
  
"All kinds. They would talk while they stood around the mirrors. I don't really see the point of going to the bathroom when you don't even go near the stalls-they were probably just all avoiding me." Myrtle's eyes became watery again and she dried them with her crumpled up towel.  
  
Nick wanted to ask Myrtle about a particular rumor-one pertaining to two particular people-not that he was sure there was one, but well, he had noticed things...  
  
"Any specific kind of gossip lately? "  
  
"Since when are you interested in the gossip of a bunch of pre-teenage girls? "  
  
"Since now" Nick said shortly, thinking he might just ask the fat friar instead of Myrtle. It was humilating to admit to actually paying attention to such a petty thing, either way. That stupid git Peeves. This was one hundred percent his fault.  
  
Myrtle blinked at him through her murky glasses. "The girls usually talk about Harry. I wonder what they'd say if they knew he used to visit me-He even sat on toilet seat of my toilet once." Myrtle's eyes misted.   
  
"Only to perfom some magic transforming spell, though," she added, seeing Nick's disgusted face.  
  
He really did not need to hear about this, but if they were talking about Harry, maybe he could find out exactly...  
  
"What kind of rumors about Harry?"  
  
Myrtle looked at him sharply. "I still don't see why you want to know so badly, but alright, I'll tell you. There was one the other day that he wears boxers with little hear-"  
  
Leave it to Myrtle to remember the ones about Harry's boxer collection. Nicholas cleared his throat.  
  
"No,no, not that kind!Any gossip about Harry..and..umm..girls?"  
  
"Naturally. None of them have a bit of truth to them." Not a bit. Harry would never date anyone, thought Myrtle. She hoped not. Too bad she had moved out of the girl's bathroom, maybe he would have come to pay her another visit again. The only other boys that had ever entered besides him were those two red haired twins-and that was to steal her favorite toilet seat.  
  
She frowned. "Harry and Ginny. Harry and Cho. Harry and Lavender. Harry and Hermione. Pretty much every girl's been linked to him at least once," Myrtle admitted begrudgingly.  
  
"Him and Hermione?" Peeves smiled to himself. "Most interesting. I thank you for divulging this information to me." Hah! Peeves was going to owe him money big time! That would show him to place bets!! Wait..It was just a rumor, Nick reminded himself. Until the rumor became fact, he wouldn't be getting so much as one knut from Peeves. Even if it was true he would have to personally blackmail Peeves before he would part with his money.  
  
"Bunch of tosh, all of it" snapped Myrtle, put out. The idea of Harry with someone else was not exactly a pleasant one. "Hermione and that other boy, what's his name? Ah yes, Ron. I used to hear them shout at each other all the time from my bathroom stall. They're far more likely to get together."  
  
"You just don't like the idea of Harry being connected with someone other than your toilet seat" Nick muttered.  
  
Myrtle began crying. "I-I-If your going to make fun of me, you had better get o-out of h-h-here now."  
  
Nicholas was rapidly losing his temper. Did Moaning Myrtle have to be on the verge of tears every five seconds?  
  
"I hope you don't wake up everyone within a five mile radius with your whining when Harry and Hermione get together then" mumbled Nick softly under his breath as he began walking towards the far wall.  
  
"THEY WON'T! " Myrtle yelled at him, obviously catching what he hadn't meant for her to hear. Nick winced. Her yelling was just as loud as her complaining. "HERMIONE HAS TO GO WITH RON! "  
  
Myrtle must have steeped in the sauna for too long, decided Nick. He was glad there was a good twenty five feet between him and what he deemed a ghost on the way to being absolutely barking mad.  
  
"I'm afraid they won't. You're just setting yourself up for a dissapointment if you don't face the facts, " Nick said.  
  
"HOW MUCH DO YOU WANNA BET?" shouted Myrtle, who was rapidly leaving being absolutely barking mad and approaching absolutely barking multi personality mad.  
  
Nick, already envisioning the bag of sickles that would fall into his hands from Peeves if the rumor prooved to be true, suddenly imagined another bag being added to the first one.   
  
"Fourty sickles enough? "  
  
Myrtle dropped her mouth open in surprise. "Are you serious? "  
  
"Yup." Nick gave a huge grin, making his head swing a bit lopsided. "Enough to buy you a year's subscription to witch's weekly and get you Bobber's Pimple Pricking Treatment."  
  
Myrtle didn't even noticed the words "pimple pricking".   
  
"Is it a deal? "  
  
She didn't hesitate either. "A deal."  
  
"Right. I'll watch them- since I am the Gryffindor ghost after all-and we'll see who gets together with whom."  
  
Myrtle glared. "Oh no you won't. How do I know you won't just make something up to get the money? "   
  
Nick was abashed at her for even thinking such a thing. "Fine. How about Peeves will watch them then? "  
  
Myrtle was still a bit dubious, but she nodded anyway. "That seems fair..well, if you can actually make Peeves do anything."  
  
"I have my ways," Nick said mysteriously.   
  
"Out," Myrtle said all of a sudden.  
  
"Beg your pardon? "  
  
"You better get out. Someone- or several someones- are coming."  
  
Sure enough, Nick heard a series of footsteps outside the hall heading toward the prefect's bathroom.  
  
"I need my privacy. Out." Myrtle restressed her statement again.  
  
"What you really mean is you just want to be able to stare at the prefects in peace." If she hadn't been a ghost and a sewage-y sort of gray color, Nick was pretty sure Myrtle's cheeks would have been turning flame red.  
  
"I'm afraid you can't come here anymore. Only one ghost haunting each room. It's one of the rules, you know."  
  
"I don't come here to haunt. I come here to take a bath" Nick snapped before floating through one of the walls opposite.  
  
  
  
Myrtle floated off to stand behind the rack of towels, ready to give the prefect a nasty shock when he got done with his swim and reached for one.   
  
  
  
***************************  
  
Meanwhile, five floors, eight staircases, three landings, and thirty five portraits away, Ron and Hermione had just finished another one of their infamous big fights.  
  
The slam of the door to the Gryffindor common room resounded multitudes of times inside of Ron's aching head. Bugger. Why did Hermione have to be.so..so..so..reasonable? It was nearly impossible to argue with someone who was almost always right. And reasonable to top it all off. Especially when Ron was feeling very unreasonable. Sticking Vicky's Broom Up a Place It Shouldn't Go kind of unreasonable.  
  
Mostly when Hermione argued, Ron just stood back, yelled as loud as he could several incoherent things, then felt his hair practically blown straight back when Hermione yelled even louder right in his face.  
  
Harry had been standing there the whole time the two of them were at it and was now looking at Ron with a not very well hidden expression of amusement.   
  
You wouldn't find it so funny if she was yelling full blast at you, thought Ron darkly. But the closest Hermione had ever come to either verbally or physically abusing Harry was when she had accidentally dropped the two thousand page magical encyclopedia on his toe. Now THAT had been hilarious.  
  
Fred and George had also been privy to the whole argument and actually were looking at Ron with what appeared to be astonishment. Strange. But then that was the kind of people the twins were to begin with. Too bad he hadn't threatened to throw an exploding malt ball at her or something. His brothers would probably have been full of admiration. Either that or they would have told him to "catch" and thrown one at him.  
  
"Phew. You know, If Hermione slams this door one more time, it'll be in serious danger of breaking altogether. I wonder how many people exactly heard you two shouting? " said George.  
  
Ron glared at them.   
  
"Oh I wouldn't worry," said George. "Probably only the people in Gryffindor-"  
  
" -and the rest of the houses-" added Fred.  
  
"-the whole of Hogwarts-"  
  
"-the whole of England-"  
  
"Why, people in Australia are probably using the hoarse shouts of Hermione as a wake up call," said George.  
  
Ron's glare lessened a small fraction. A very small fraction. "Hoarse shouts? Loud, extremely grating high pitched shouts that resemble the noise a banshee makes when it stubs its toe is more like it. "  
  
"That's a bit rich coming from you, Ron. If she sounds like a banshee then you sound like a very pissed monkey," Ginny replied, sticking up for Hermione. After she spoke, she went out in a way similiar to best friend's recent exit, slamming the door so hard the door frame shuddered.  
  
Harry, grinning, tried to get Ron in a better mood as well by telling him of the worst thing he could think of that had happened to Viktor that day.  
  
"Oh come on Ron. I know just what will cheer you up. Krum scraped his head trying to get into class today. Last time I saw him coming out of the infirmary, he had a bump on his forehead the size of an egg."  
  
Krum shouldn't have been in class at Hogwarts at all, thought Ron. He should be far away at his school with the glaciers, polar bears, and penguins. That was what he and Hermione had started this whole arguement over anyway. Vicky switching schools. As Ron had told Hermione before they started shouting, he had nothing against Vicky switching schools and discovering new experiences..as long as it wasn't HIS school.  
  
"Probably the size of his brain as well," moaned Ron.   
  
"Hope you didn't say that to Hermione". Harry looked at him. "You didn't, did you? "  
  
"Yeah. More or less."  
  
"Ouch."  
  
George and Fred snickered. "In that case, you're very lucky you don't have a gigantic imprint of one of Hermione's textbooks smashed into your face."  
  
"Krum and Hermione can't get together, too many communication problems" said George, busy in one corner with Fred- making some new ultimate kind of dungbomb, judging from the way strange colored explosions went off every few minutes.  
  
"Yeah. Krum would say 'vat is that, Herm-oh-ninny? ' and she would think he told her go and boil her head in a vat. Trust me, it would never work between the two."  
  
Fred pretended to think. "Well I wouldn't be so sure. I mean, what if Hermione knowns Bulgarian? "  
  
George and Harry said the same thing at the same time. "Shut up."  
  
"Why are you so concerned about Viktor and Hermione anyway if you and her are just friends?" mused Harry. But it was too late. Ron had already stamped off to the Gryffindor boy's dormitories.  
  
Fred sighed. "Ah, the harsh woes of young love."  
  
Harry ruined his moment. "Hah! Whereas you and Angelina are soo much older and sophisticated than both of them."  
  
George laughed. "If you consider staking out closets to snog in sophisticated, then yes, I agree completely."  
  
Harry snickered before going back to reading his much thumbed and reread Quidditch Through The Ages. A secret insecurity wouldn't go away though and finally he took his nose out of the book, determined to get rid of it once and for all.  
  
Walking over to Fred and George, he stood gingerly to one side as the small array of multi colored sparks continued to admit from their "experiment".   
  
"I've been thinking and..you don't think Ron likes Hermione, do you? "  
  
George stopped tinkering with the small, apparently quite volatile object to speak to Harry.  
  
"Oh no. And I don't believe the sky is blue either." He shook his head before going industeriously back to work. "It's obvious."  
  
"Oh. Oh. Yes, I suppose it is," said Harry miserably before going back to the sofa, where he would spend the next hour or so reading the same page of Quidditch Through The Ages over and over.  
  
  
  
------end chapter----- 


	2. Apologies

@All Bets Are On...@ ch.2-Apologies by:GoldenSilence ------ disclaimer:J.K Rowling owns all characters etc.-*sniffle*..I'm only a lowly kid writing fanfiction. WARNING:There is some Viktor Krum bashing in this fic. No harm meant to Viktor or all of his fans out there. ------- A/N=The couple in this is not the "obvious" one you think, so people that do not like R/H should keep reading-you may find yourself quite surprised in chapters to come. I have no idea how long this is going to be..maybe three or four chapters?Depends if I(and you reviewers) like where it's going. Thanks to everyone that reviewed the first chapter!I appreciate all your comments.:) And yes, I will take votes on which coupling you want this to end up with-but I'm not promising anything as I sort of already have a certain couple in mind...and I'm quite sure it's not who anybody thinks. --------  
  
In one of the numerous rooms that the polegerist haunted, Peeves sat with an array of gadgets spread out around him. Most of them were simply useful for playing a few "harmless" pranks(or as Filch was wont to call them, dangerous catastrophes) but there had to be something that would help with his latest venture.  
  
Peeves picked up a water baloon and juggled it while he searched through his stach. Cattle prod? No, not a good idea-unless he wanted Harry and Hermione to have a love of the eternal sort-besides, it had never worked quite the same since Proffessor McGonagall had thrown it into the Forbidden Forest and that centaur had bitten on it. Now where was that...aha!  
  
Peeves threw the water baloon he had at one of the portraits, an infuriated and indignant gurgle emitting from the now soaked picture.   
  
With his hands now free, he picked up the object with a reverence usually reserved only for the Bloody Baron himself. Peeves cackled as he swung the thing around the small room, sparks issueing forth from the tip of it.   
  
Sure, it was only half a wand-but still, it was better then nothing. There was no way that other ghost would win against him when he had magic and mischief on his side. Not to mention Moaning Myrtle, who would make sure Ron and Hermione got together and Harry stayed "devilishly single" -until he was of legal age for Myrtle to start pulling him into darkened hallway closets probably.  
  
Peeves evaporated out of the room, the destruction still there as clearly caused by him as if he had signed his name to it. Once glance around the small place and it was apparent why. The walls had gone from being a somber grey to looking as if a toddler had been allowed to run rampant with a set of paints- all thanks to Peeves careless twirling of the wand.  
  
Peeves and a wand were a bad combination. Peeves and a wand when he had never made it past his third year at Hogwarts were just plain lethal.  
  
And so Peeves had a disasterous, humilating , and terror-strewn night. More accurately, he made thirty different people have a disasterous, humilating, and terror strewn night. Peeves's night couldn't have been better..unless he had managed to find Ron and Hermione. But sadly(for him) and thankfully(for Hermione and Ron) he didn't. His plans for those two could wait until that afternoon..and then..  
  
well, then Peeves would be Peeves.  
  
Moaning Myrtle was making similiar plans of her own. So was Nearly Headless Nick. Too bad Peeves didn't know they both had wands as well.  
  
*************  
  
One person did NOT have a grasp of apparition strong enough that she could float through walls as Peeve's had. Ginny(and most of the other Gryffindors besides)was seriously starting to wish that particular person did. Hermione Granger stormed into the girl's dormitories with her hair flying every which way, her nose turned up, her eyes narrowed into tiny slits, and face who's expression stated the next person to so much talk to her would get a punch in the nose.  
  
Ginny sincerly hoped best friends were not included in that category. She decided she would wait for Hermione to cool down a bit before she spoke. The last time she tried to talk directly to Hermione after a fight, she ended up with a mouthful of socks when Hermione threw them furiously.  
  
Slamming her stack of books on the table, Hermione fell half dressed back unto her canopy with a huff.  
  
"So what did you and Ron argue about this time?" asked Parvarti casually from her and Parvarti's bunks, ignoring the warning glances coming from all the girls around the room telling her to shut up.  
  
Hermione refused to budge her face from the feather pillow covering it. "How did you know?" came her muffled voice.  
  
" You stamped up two flights of stairs and slammed five doors just to get here," said Parvarti.  
  
Hermione buried her head deeper into her pillow. "Leave me alone." A few ears persisted in straining in the direction of Hermione and Ginny, but most of the girls not yet asleep just went back to whispering in hushed tones. It wasn't as if Hermione's and Ron's fights were anything new.   
  
Ginny snuggled into her bed adjacent to Hermione's.  
  
"Hard to talk to you when you're burying your head in the pillow like an ostrich."  
  
Hermione sniffled and muttered again for Ginny to leave her alone, but she did turn her face away from the pillow. Her eyes looked red- Ginny had a sneaking suspicion she had been crying again.  
  
"So-what were you and Ron argueing about this time?" Ginny whispered the same question Parvarti had asked a little while ago.  
  
"Nothing-and everything," groaned Hermione.  
  
"The usual reasons then. Viktor, right?"  
  
"Yeah. Honestly, I don't see why Ron gets so worked up over him. I mean, Viktor is at Hogwarts now. It's not like I can just turn invisible every time I see him coming down the halls," Hermione said angrily.  
  
"Ron does know you don't like Viktor, doesn't he?"  
  
"Of course!Sort of." Ginny raised an eyebrow. "If his brains didn't turn to butterbeer every time Viktor was brought up, he wouldn't have had any trouble understanding me the first twenty times I told him."  
  
"Maybe you were too subtle?"  
  
Hermione grinned wryly. "I don't think so. Not unless you consider screaming in his ear from a few inches away subtle."  
  
"Maybe Ron has his reasons," Ginny pointed out quietly. "You did go with Viktor to the ball last year.."  
  
"Only because no one else asked me first."   
  
"You mean because Ron or Harry didn't ask you first," said Ginny keenly.  
  
Hermione continued on as if she hadn't heard Ginny. "At least Viktor noticed I was a girl right off. It took five hours of me getting slathered in makeup and torturing my hair for the thought to even hit Harry-and until he knew some guy was actually going with me, Ron was just as clueless."   
  
Ron may have been clueless before that the ball, but afterwards he certainly wasn't. It was Ginny's opinion Ron was, in fact, only clueless about the fact there was nothing between Hermione and Viktor.  
  
Hermione continued her rant. "Honestly, Ron's such a-"  
  
"-brainless git," finished Ginny.  
  
Did you know what I caught him doing today?Watching me and Viktor with a pair of binoculars! He's so-"  
  
"Incorrigible," Ginny cut in again.  
  
"Ooh, he just makes me want to-"  
  
"Hit him over the head with a broomstick." Ginny tried to keep from smiling. "You know, it's the same every time."  
  
"No it isn't. Last time you both fought, I seem to remember you throwing a crystal vase," remarked a voice thoughtfully.  
  
Hermione glared in the direction of Lavender."Butt out of it-go listen in on someone else's conversation." "EXCUSE me. I wasn't listening-I just overheard. Hard not to when you are only one bed away," Lavender said huffily before turning over on her one side to chat with Parvarti.  
  
She directed one last comment at Hermione over her shoulder. "You know, why don't you just use a megaphone when you yell at Ron?That way he'll go deaf and won't be able to hear every time you talk to Viktor."  
  
"Oh, fat chance that would help" snapped Hermione. "He already acts as if he has cotton stuffed in both ears every time I bring up Viktor-the last thing I need for him to do is go deaf. I rather I go deaf so I don't have to hear every time Ron yells insults at me."  
  
Lavender merely shook her head and went back to chatting with Parvarti. Hermione "hmphhed" and put her pillow back over her head again, probably because her eyes were beginning to look a bit watery.  
  
Ginny stared at the ceiling. All this fighting between Ron and Hermione was nonsensical. The either needed to be best friends or they needed to start dating. One or the other. Right now, they were halfway between both and it wasn't getting them anywhere.  
  
***********  
  
In the boy's dormitory, Ron was in quite a similiar position to Hermione-except that instead of covering his face with his pillow, he was punching it with venemence.  
  
"You know, if you punch that thing one more time, feathers will explode everywhere?" said Harry by way of conversation.  
  
Ron sighed. "Bugger, Harry, you broke my concentration. I was trying to imagine Krum's face."  
  
George voice echoed from the other side of the room. "First the dismembered figurine, then the autograph which you tore up into little peices and ate. Now the disturbing mental images..If I didn't know you better, I would almost think you didn't like Krum."  
  
"Oh, I'm sure they are really quite chummy." Fred sarcastically rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "Why, they'll be walking down the halls arm in arm any day now."  
  
"Talk about disturbing mental image..." said George.  
  
Ron was fairly seething. "Not like Krum?That,that,that..." "Words fail to express his vileness?" asked Harry.   
  
Ron grinned rather nastily. "No, there's too many to chose from."   
  
"..What you need is a dartboard with a big picture of Krum dead center," suggested Fred.  
  
"You mean Vicky," stated George. He watched as Ron's eyes turned murderously in his direction...along with his his aim. A pillow hit George square in the face minutes later. Breaking at last, feathers descended lightly all around George's bed. George began gathering them all and dumping them on his dresser.... not so much to clean up, Harry figured, as to save them to put in the new, improved canary creams the twins were inventing.  
  
"Shut up George."  
  
"That proves my point. He DOES throw things every time Viktor's mentioned," said George to Fred.  
  
"GOOD NIGHT." Ron closed the drapes around his bed.   
  
It was only after a few minutes had passed, that Harry dared to voice his question, not even sure if Ron would hear it or if he had already fallen asleep.  
  
"Ron?Do you like Hermione?"  
  
He could hear a great intake of breath from Ron's bed. Harry crossed his fingers underneath the blankets. Ron and Harry had had their trying moments in their friendship-just like Ron and Hermione were currently having-but both of them liking Hermione would be the end of all of them being friends. Unless one of them never admitted to liking her. Harry felt quite as miserable as Ron. Either give up her..or give up his best friend. Have two best friends while he was miserable or have one girlfriend while Ron was miserable. He shouldn't have to chose. But he did.   
  
"Don't be silly. You would have to be completely mental to like her..."  
  
Not at all, thought Harry, his spirits rising. Though he was angry Ron was still so dismissive of Hermione, at least now Harry had a shot at her. Maybe he wouldn't have to chose!  
  
"..She sometimes acts like know-it-all, is bossy, sarcastic, has bushy hair, and likes someone else. Any guy would be stark mad to think they had a chance.." Ron's voice dropped so low Harry could barely hear it. "Yeah, I like her."  
  
Harry's optimistic thinking went right back down the road to pesismism. He WOULD have to chose-and it was by no means going to be easy. Harry didn't trust himself to say anything, so he simply pretended to be asleep and hoped Ron thought he was.  
  
"Okay, enough of this buried emotion stuff. This is coming to an end once and for all," said a sleepy voice. Apparently, George and Fred hadn't gone to bed yet either. Footsteps could be heard on the stone floor before there was the sound of drapes being ripped open.  
  
Harry opened his own drapes to see what was going on. George was pulling Ron by one arm and Fred was pushing him from behind. Seeing Harry, Fred spoke. "You coming Harry?"  
  
Harry wasn's sure what the twins were planning, but he had a pretty good idea. Visions of Ron and Hermione kissing danced through his head. "Sure."  
  
I don't know what you plan on doing, but may I suggest dumping him in the prefects bath?Because he's just begging for it," said Fred as they dragged a protesting Ron behind them. It was taking all of Fred's, George's, and Harry's efforts just to make Ron budge an inch.  
  
George spoke through gritted teeth as he pulled harder on Ron's nightgown sleeve. "We're going to the girl's dormitories- Lil'ronniekins and Hermione are going to either declare their love for each other or break every last peice of furniture in the room trying to kill each other. Either way, they are both going to apologize for all this bloody stupid fighting."  
  
"Sorry about all this, Ron-but if I were you, I'd go for a bit of both," said Harry as he redoubled his efforts to push Ron further in the direction of the girl's dormitories (Ron, having heard George, was now being more difficult than ever.)   
  
Ron didn't pause to think about the strange meaning behind Harry's words, too busy struggling-and it was just as well he didn't. George and Fred however, did.   
  
**********  
  
Hermione half woke to the noises of someone protesting loudly as he was dragged down the hall just outside the dormitories. The next noise that followed; the sound of a good deal of the Gryffindor girls screaming, woke Hermione all the way.  
  
Stepping out of her bed to see what all the commotion was about, she found herself staring at the entrance to the dormitories, where Fred, George, Harry, and Ron all stood-red faced but resolute.  
  
"What are you doing here?" hissed Hermione furiously when all of the shrieking had died down.  
  
George and Fred roughly pushed Ron forward. "Ask him."  
  
Hermione looked towards Ron. His ears shining red and a furious expression on his face, he didn't say a word. The girls(now almost all awake except for Lavender, who slept with a pair of purple earmuffs so she didn't have to hear Parvarti snore) were watching the scene unfolding intently. "Ron needs to tell you a few things and being the stubborn git that he is, he would rather be moping in his bed about it," put in George helpfully.  
  
"Now fight fair," said Harry, who would much rather think of them fighting than the none to appealing alternative. "Stand at least five feet apart."  
  
"No punching or throwing glass vases-," said Fred.  
  
"-at us," added George.  
  
Both twins backed up into a corner away from both Hermione and Ron, who were, Hermione noted uncomfortably, the main center of the attention of at least thirty pairs of eyes. Ginny glared at the twins. "Some referees the two of you are." "Hey, we have our dashing good looks to protect," said George. Ginny rolled her eyes. "And I suppose inventing a more explosive type of dungbomb is doing just that?"  
  
"How did she find out about our invention?That was supposed to be top-secret!" muttered Fred to George.  
  
Meanwhile, Hermione and Ron were just staring at each other. They had just fought and things were awkward between them to begin with-all the people spectator to their awkwardness just served to make them both even more awkward.  
  
"I've got nothing to say to you.."  
  
"Neither do I."  
  
"That explains why you are talking to each other, then," said George impatiently. Fred and George were doing more to get the two to apologize then Harry was, thought Harry with a feeling of guilt. It wasn't that he didn't want his two best friends to be on good terms again, he reminded himself-he just was afraid of what they would do once they were on good terms. Asking each other out was one thing that came to mind..  
  
"Sorry" said Hermione, looking at her unshod feet.  
  
"Yeah" said Ron,rubbing the back of his neck and refusing to look Hermione directly in the eye as much as she was refusing to do the same. He abruptly wheeled around and grabbed his twin brothers's arms. "Okay, we're out of here."  
  
Hermione just stood gaping after them as they turned around and made for the door. "You came all the way up here to just utter one word?"  
  
Ron still didn't look at her. "Pretty much- but then you wouldn't care, would you?Too busy thinking about Vicky to care about some stupid arguement we had, right?"  
  
"No, that's not right at all. Ron..."  
  
But Ron was gone, leaving a Fred, George, and Harry behind.  
  
"If both of your apologies were as long as your arguements, we wouldn't have this problem," said Fred knowingly. Hermione turned towards Harry with a soft look in her eyes that didn't have much of an effect on him-unlike the unexpected effect it had on George, who suddenly felt a bit funny.  
  
"Guess I should say sorry to you too. It can't be fun always being stuck in the middle of our spats."  
  
"Oh, it's not, but it provides the highest quality entertainment short of Snape parading around in his boxers." George grinned.   
  
"Do you mind? I was apologizing to Harry." Hermione glared.   
  
"Apology excepted. Just do me a favor and don't mention Viktor around Ron again-ever."  
  
Harry hadn't meant for his words to come out so clipped, but he couldn't help it. He was mad at Hermione. It wasn't her fault her liked her-or that Ron was too blind to see that she didn't like Viktor, but Harry couldn't help being mad all the same. Why couldn't things go back to the relative uncomplicated way they had been during their first year? When none of them liked anybody-much less each other.  
  
What's with him? thought Hermione. Great. Just what she needed. Harry AND Ron mad at her. The way this is going, I might as well start dying my nails bright pink and start hanging with Lavender and Parvarti-doesn't look like I'll have any other best friends besides Ginny.  
  
George sighed. "Come on Harry, we better hurry and find Ron before he does something stupid."  
  
"Like finally unhinge the door to the Gryffindor Common room?" asked Fred as they left the girl's dormitories.  
  
After the boys were out of earshot, Ginny asked Hermione a question of her own as they each got back into their respective beds.  
  
"Do you..ermm..like my brother?"  
  
Hermione gave a small smile. "Percy?Afraid he's already taken by Mr. Crouch."  
  
"You know who I'm talking about," said Ginny.  
  
"Like Ron??!!Please don't ask me that. At this moment, I positively abhor his very guts!" said Hermione, temporarily forgetting Ginny was Ron's sister.  
  
"Hopefully not in the same way as Malfoy?"  
  
"No-Malfoy's different. I hate him all the time-whereas, I only hate Ron some of the time."  
  
The moment Hermione hit the pillow, she drifted off into a complete and sound sleep.  
  
Ginny reflected on what Hermione had said. It wasn't a direct yes. But it wasn't a direct no either. Ginny would have to think on it.   
  
******** A/N#2=What do you think? Next chapter up in a week or so! 


	3. An Extended Breakfast

@All Bets Are On...@  
(3/?) An Extended Breakfast  
by:GoldenSilence   
link:http://pub39.ezboard.com/ugoldenquill.showPublicProfile?language=EN  
e-mail:flipgal14@yahoo.com   
category:Romance/humor   
keywords:Hermione/Ron, Hermione/Harry, Hermione/George spoilers:PS/SS,CoS, GoF  
rating:PG   
summary: Nearly Headless Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves all have their own opinions(not to mention their own bets) of who in gryffindor is going to get together. Harry/Hermione? Ron/Hermione?Someone else/Hermione? Now that would be telling.;)   
disclaimer:This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended  
  
---------------  
a/n=Wow. I never expected to get very many reviews for this-so once again, I owe all you reviewers and readers a big thanks! Glad to know that someone finds my writing intresting.^ _ ^I'm wondering if I should perhaps do an ending to please each different coupling(you know, one Hr/H ending,one Hr/H, and one Hr/R ending etc.) if you drop off a review, would you tell me if that's a good idea or if I should just stick to one ending with one particular couple??  
My apologies if Peeves is out of character a bit. I tried to make him alot like he was in the book-but well, it's a bit hard to get his way of speech ( rhyming and all) down.  
All George/Hermione moments dedicated to the few George/Hermione fans. Power in numbers!  
All Ron/Hermione moments dedicated to the rabid Ron/Hermione fans.  
And last, but certainly not least, all Harry/Hermione moments dedicated to their own set of fans..sorry there isn't as much about them in this chapter-there will be in the next one.:)  
---------------  
  
Ron was sitting by Seamus. And Hermione was way over by Neville. Not their usual breakfast seating arrangements, but it couldn't be helped. Harry felt miserable as surveyed both of their stony expressions. Not that he wanted for Ron and Hermione to start going out or anything, but having them argueing and practically at the point of not speaking to each other wasn't exactly fun either. Hermione was sitting as far away as possible from Ron for that exact reason.  
  
Harry couldn't decide whether to go join Hermione or Ron. If he sat by one, it was bound to offend the other-and he really didn't want to get either one mad at him right then. He had already seen what both could do when they were in a bad mood. Making up his mind, Harry sat down next to Lavender and Parvarti, feeling breakfast was going to be a very dismal affair.  
  
Another day. Another morning. Another breakfast. Another chance to scare the first years witlessby appearing in the middle of the pitcher of orange juice. The ghosts had more on their minds than their usual ambitions-well, at least three of them did, anyway. The fat friar was too busy trying to get his fingers unstuck from a pot of jam and the bloody baron too busy fawning over the gray lady to think of much else at the moment.  
  
Moaning Myrtle, Peeves, and Nearly Headless Nick were all present and talking animatedly-reason enough to see that they were up to some form or other of mischief. They were seated at a small table away from the usual house tables they sat at ( or that Peeves and Nearly Headless Nick sat at, it had been awhile since Myrtle had been anywhere but the bathrooms. )   
  
The table was also far away from Hermione, Ron, and Harry, of course. The ghosts didn't want any "accidents" that happened between the three students to be traced back to them.  
  
Nearly Headless Nick had been most surprised to see Myrtle at breakfast. She hadn't come out of the bathrooms for twenty years (thank goodness for that, said most) and he wasn't sure why Myrtle was bothering now. He wasn't sure until he remembered the bet they had agreed on last night.  
  
Ugh. Having Peeves messing with his plans for Harry and Hermione was bad enough-but Peeves and Myrtle together as a team messing with his plans? Harry, Hermione, and Ron would count themselves lucky if they got through the day-much less breakfast-without a broken bone.  
  
Nearly Headless Nick raised an eyebrow as Myrtle floated by and sat down next to Peeves.  
"You? At breakfast? What a surprise. I thought you were now permanently attached to the prefect's bathroom."  
  
Myrtle sighed. "Yes, well, I don't need to bother haunting there in the morning. They only have time to take showers and that's ruins all the fun because.."  
  
Peeves looked dissapointed as Nearly Headless Nick "ahemed" loudly to cut Myrtle off.  
"No further information needed. We were alive once, I think we get the picture."  
  
A small sniffle emitted from Myrtle. "Oh sure. Alive. Once. Go ahead and rub it in that I can't be with him."  
  
Peeves cackled noisily. Nick couldn't make up his mind which grated his nerves worse. Peeve's cackling or Myrtle's sniffling.   
  
"Onle one pimply wimply needs to hook up with is her mirror."  
  
Myrtle blinked her eyes rapidly and Nick was amazed to see that she actually managed to keep from crying ( though not from wiping at her nose and eyes.)  
  
"Good grog, who are you stalking now?" he asked, praying that Myrtle's eyes remained dry throughout breakfast. Said eyes got a familiar misty quality to them as Myrtle's attention was diverted by a familiar boy with dreadlocks at the Gryffindor table (luckily away from her clutches. )  
  
"Stalking? I'm merely watching out for him."  
  
Peeves nodded in mock seriousness. "I know what pimply wimply means. So easy to suffocate in those shower curtains, isn't it?"  
  
"I do not watch him in the shower. That's sick. "  
  
A grin formed on Peeve's face. "Sicky icky pimply wimply watches prefects take baths!"  
  
Myrtle began sniffling more than ever. "Only occasionally. And they aren't indecent or anything. They wear towels."  
  
"Not when they get in the water." Nick made the mistake of contributing to the conversation. Myrtle thought for a moment. "Umm..they wear bathing suits?"  
  
Peeves, having come up with a new ingenius rythm, began chanting it as loudly as he could. "Pimply wimply's ick! She has an obsession with prefect's broomsticks!"  
  
Myrtle hid her face behind a goblet of apple cider as several other faces, including Lee Jordan's, looked to see where the rythm was coming from.  
  
"Oh stop! Insensitive!"  
  
Tears dripped off Myrtle's nose into the large pot containing oatmeal. Seamus ladled some out into his bowl with a spoon and grinned at Myrtle. "Geez, thanks. Now the stuff won't break several of my teeth when I try to eat it."  
  
Myrtle didn't hear him, she was too busy bawling, making just as much racket as Peeves, who continued to shout his new rythm with glee as loudly as he could, particularly in Lee Jordan's direction.  
  
Nearly Headless Nick adjusted the ruffle around his neck, playing spectator to Peeve's ongoing pestering of Myrtle. Thank goodness he wasn't for Ron and Hermione getting together-with Myrtle and Peeves on the same team, Ron and Hermione were far more likely to end up yelling and throwing things at each other again. Peeves and Myrtle couldn't work together for anything if their lives depended on it, thought Nick. Two minutes into breakfast and they had already forgotten all about the bet, he was sure.  
  
Fingers were put in ears all around as Peeves magnified his voice with the use of a wand and continued to recite the rythm louder than ever, egged on by Myrtle's cries to stop. Nick sighed. It was going to be one looong morning.  
  
  
********************  
  
Five minutes later, Myrtle and Peeves proved Nick wrong. Not only where they remembering the bet, they were now doing everything to make it end on their own terms...while still argueing with each other, naturally.  
  
"Lob Erok's extra-explosive dungbombs at Potter the Rotter and send him to the infirmary!" shouted Peeves.   
  
"How about locking him in a closet?" suggested Myrtle. Nick knew exactly why she wanted to do THAT. If Harry was locked in a closet, he wouldn't be without company..Myrtle's company.  
  
"No locking Harry in a closet," he looked at Myrtle pointedly. "Especially not with anyone else."  
  
Nick turned to Peeves. "No dungbombs either. Maiming the students is NOT allowed."  
  
Peeves shrugged. "So? It would get rid of the competition."  
  
Nick glowered. "My point exactly. I am the competition, remember?"  
  
As Nick was saying this, the fat friar floated past, his finger at last unstuck from the jelly jar. He stopped to beam merrily at them all.  
  
"Did I hear competition? I'm always up for a little competition."  
  
Not another ghost entering the bet. This was getting out of hand. Myrtle spoke before Nearly Headless Nick could come up with a lie to get the fat friar out of the way.  
  
"It's not a competition. It's a bet."  
  
The fat friar's eyes lit up. "Oooh. On what?"  
  
"Not what. Who," said Nearly Headless Nick impatiently.  
  
"Aha. So you're the ones betting on if Seamus is going to trip over his new robes before the day is over, eh? Well, I'll join in. Fifty knuts he makes it to lunch without a scratch."  
  
"Not our bet," said Peeves. "That's between the gray lady and his royal bloodyness."  
  
"Oh. Then you must be betting on whether one of the house elves is going to catch on fire roasting s'mores."  
  
"Not us either. Is there any ghost not in on a bet? " asked Nick.  
  
"Nope. There isn't much else to do. Unless you want to play wizard's poker with the bloody baron. And everyone knows he cheats," answered the fat friar. "So what exactly are you betting on, then?"  
  
"Potter the rotter and the frizzball or freckles and the frizzball," said the ever flattering and kind Peeves.  
  
"Which freckles?" The fat friar looked at the various members of the Weasley family that were seated around the Gryffindor table.  
  
Peeves suddenly grinned in a way that meant trouble. "You'll see..."  
  
Taking a wand out from where he had been hiding it under the table, he pointed it at Hermione-or rather, Hermione and her chair. With a scraping noise, the chair zoomed across the floor, a very shocked Hermione gripping with white knuckles to the sides of the chair for dear life as faces at the various tables rushed by her in a flurry of color.  
  
"Ah," said the fat friar as he watched Hermione's chair propelling her across the floor towards the opposite end of the Gryffindor table and towards a certain redheaded bloke. "Her and George, is it?"  
  
In a rare display of violence, Myrtle yanked out her own wand and bopped Nick over the head with it. "Not George! You were supposed to send her towards Ron!"  
  
  
**************************  
  
Hermione's chair slid neatly into an empty spot between Fred and George. Both smiled at her.  
  
"You're welcome," the twins chorused.  
  
"For what?"  
  
"For us deciding to share our lovely company with you," said Fred.  
  
"Plus, not mentioning the fact that you must really be mad at Ron if you move your chair halfway across the room just to get away from him," said George ironically.   
  
"And come to sit next to us," continued Fred. "You're desperate. Or did you think me or George was Percy come back again? The resemblance is stunning..other than that neither of us fancies wearing a fez."  
  
"Unless it's somewhere it shouldn't go," said George with a wink. "Only kidding!" he added when he saw the shocked expression on Hermione's face.  
  
Fred looked at Lee Jordan, who was sitting across the table from him. "Think we ought to stuff her ears with cotton balls so she can't hear our plans?"  
  
Lee shook his head. "It would work better if we actually had some. How about using these scones instead? I think they'll fit."  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Of all people, I would get stuck with you guys."  
  
"Stuck? That's a bit rich considering you just barged yourself in your chair across the room to sit here," pointed out George.  
  
"I did not make myself come over here! I'm telling you, someone else used their wand to move my chair-it certainly wasn't me," protested Hermione.  
  
"Sure. We believe you," said Lee.  
  
"Especially since your wand's sticking oh so conviently out of your shirt pocket," said Fred.  
  
"Now, now," said George. "I'm sure she was only using it to hex Ron with."  
  
Hermione glared at the three of them. "The only reason I would come over to your table would be to knock the three of your heads together." She paused to take a sip of George's orange juice, forgetting she had left her own fifteen chairs away. "And just what plan don't you want me to know about?"  
  
"Which plan? Dipping Professor Bin's quill in invisible ink or coming up behind Professor Flitwick with a sock puppet? , " asked George. "Whoops," he added when Lee and Fred shot him dirty looks.  
  
"Right. Now that you know our plans, afraid we're going to have to hit you with a spell to make sure you keep your mouth shut," said Lee.   
  
"Not permanent, of course. Only temporary. It should wear off by the time we've finished turning Neville's toad purple," comforted Fred.  
  
"Unless you came over here to chat with us because you wanted to get revenge on one of the teachers, in which case, we're your guys," said George.  
  
"Are you daft? Why would Hermione want to get revenge on the teachers for? Getting a 100 instead of a 110 on one of her exams?" Fred snorted.  
  
"For your information, the highest you can get on any school exam is 120, not 110," said Hermione haughtily. "And why would I ever want to get revenge on a teacher? Unlike some people, my life goal isn't to get expelled."  
  
George sighed. "Pity. You're alot more fun when you act mental."  
  
"Beg your pardon? When am I ever mental?" Hermione asked indignantly.  
  
"Most of the time," all three boys responded.  
  
Hermione was about to respond when she felt the legs of her chair rattling beneath her . "Ohh. Oh no."  
  
Sure enough, a few seconds later and Hermione was once again flying across the room at top speed in her chair. She called over her shoulder to Fred and George, just loud enough so that they could hear, but not so loud that she was audible over the hubub of everyone else talking.  
  
"By the way, if you're trying to get Professor Flitwick to faint, I suggest substituting a firework for his wand, NOT using a sock puppet."  
  
George watched her zoom off with a bit of a grin. "Completely mental...yet brilliant," he said in an awed voice.   
  
If his twin had known what was going through his head at that moment, he would have guffawed..if he hadn't laughed for a good twenty minutes straight first. George was now quite sure, he was developing a crush for Hermione..ack, how stupid that sounded even inside his head! She was-there was no other word for it- intresting, and you didn't meet many girls that were intresting. Or that were obsessed with schoolwork yet still posessed a sense of humor. She certainly wasn't a complete stick in the mud like Percy. Yet George and her were complete opposites. That thought only made him like her even more. He didn't want a clone that was just like him..goodness, he already had a twin, didn't he?  
  
But Harry and Ron both were already quite taken with her. George would just have to lurk around in the background and wait. Or hide his feelings. It wouldn't kill him. Why, oh why did he have to like a girl that already had two people smitten with her?  
  
  
**********************************  
  
  
Meanwhile, Myrtle was smiling as she took out a wand of her own and gave it a wave towards Hermione. "There. That should fix it," she said in a satisfied voice.  
  
"Looks like someone can't resist that Weasley animal magnetism" commented Fred as he, Lee, and George watched Hermione and her chair slid off towards Ron.  
  
  
*****************************  
  
Ron didn't even glance at Hermione as her chair moved into a space at the table beside his.  
  
"So you decided to sit next to your best friend after all? What, did you find out Fred and George used to dress matching and sleep with identical teddy bears? Or was Krum's fan club taking up all the available space next to him?"  
  
Hermione thought it best not to mention she hadn't come to sit next to Ron of her own free will-they were on bad enough terms with each other right now as it was.  
  
"I'll be minus one best friend if you don't stop talking like that. I don't see why it bugs you so much. Me and Viktor are just good friends. Aren't I allowed to be friends with anyone besides Harry and you?"  
  
"Sure. Look, Hermione, I can believe you are just friends with Krum, but I don't believe he's just friends with you. The guy doesn't understand the meaning of the word no."  
  
"You don't even know him, so don't make assumptions," snapped Hermione, fed up. She had figured if she was already by Ron that they could have made up, but his pigheadedness was making things impossible.  
  
"Oh right. What about you sitting next to Fred and George just minutes ago then? Hermione, what is it with you and older guys?"  
  
Hermione's face turned slightly red.   
  
"There you go again! I did NOT sit next to Fred and George because I wanted to, alright? Anymore than I am sitting next to you just 'cause I feel like it. Because, I assure you, I don't right now. Will you stop acting like I'm snogging half the school behind your back? I'm not like that, you know that. I'd tell you if I was dating anybody, same as I would tell Harry."  
  
She counted to ten in her head and then finished her rant. " I'm not your little sister, so nice of you as it is, please stop trying to protect me. I can take care of myself."  
  
"I know," said Ron, the anger in his voice from earlier dissapearing. "It's just I..."  
he broke off and looked miserable at his plate. "Oh never mind. You wouldn't listen if I said it anyway."  
  
"Said what?"  
  
How could he say it? He had been trying to figure out ways to say what he wanted to say for a year now-a year! Practicing in front of his mirror was not nearly the same as telling her face to face though.   
  
Ron gulped. "It's just..never mind. Forget it." And once again, I blow a perfect oppurtunity to tell her. Bugger. I will tell her. Eventually. Just have to wait for the right moment...  
  
There was an awkward pause before Ron spoke tenatively. "So can we go back to being best friends? I'm sorry about the whole Krum thing. I'll get blinders or something so I can't see him, promise. Really, really sorry."  
  
"Sorrier than last night?"  
  
"Of course. You get dragged out of bed at three in the morning to go to the girl's dormitories and it's sort of hard to feel anything besides an urge to kick Fred and George in the shins."  
  
Hermione smiled. "I'm really, really sorry too. Guess we are back to being be-"  
She didn't get a word further as for the third time, her chair began rattling. "Not again," she moaned.  
  
"Wicked! Where'd you learn that?" asked Ron as Hermione's chair shoot backwards from the table and go skidding halfway across the floor.  
  
  
*********************************  
  
Nearly Headless Nick had watched Hermione and Ron talking to each other for as long as he could stand. Arggh. Why did her, Ron, and Harry have to be sitting apart today of all days? It made things a good deal more difficult, thought Nick as he nonchalantly took out his own wand and pointed it at Hermione, this time sending her chair towards Harry's while the fat friar watched with interest. Three could play this game.  
  
  
**********************************  
  
  
Hermione gave a resigned sigh as she saw who her chair was heading towards...Harry. Unfortunately, Nick had been a little overzealous in the brandishing of his wand. Hermione ended up ramming into Harry hard. His chair fell forward and the whole emberassing incident ended with his face smashing into his bowl of oatmeal.  
  
Hermione quickly pointed her own wand at Harry's oatmeal covered face and muttered a spell under her breath. Right away, the oatmeal dissapeared off his face, thought a bit still clung to his robes and hair.  
  
"Oh Harry. Are you alright? You didn't get burned or anything, did you?" Hermione mentally berated herself at the words that came out of her mouth. She sounded like Harry's mother..or worse, his grandma. She also sounded disturbingly like Ron would have been to her, but Hermione didn't bother to realize that connection.  
  
"I'm fine. Aside from nearly falling over when you rammed into me just now. What happened?"  
  
"Oh that. It was an accident, I swear. My chair is posessed or cursed, probably by Fred and George. They must be really short for laughs if they have to resort to playing pranks on me."  
  
"I know what you mean. At least you aren't Neville..they've turned his poor toad pretty much every color of the rainbow. Want to switch chairs?"  
  
Hermione grinned, relieved. Harry had to make himself glance away so he wouldn't be caught staring at her. "Yeah. Thanks Harry."  
  
"No problem," said Harry gallantly as he stood up. Now really wasn't the time to tell her what he felt..he would just have to wait until Ron had made his move and then..well, then see how Hermione responded. Harry couldn't risk losing Ron as a friend anymore than he could risk losing Hermione...  
  
Hermione sat down in Harry's chair. Good, now maybe she could enjoy the rest of her breakfast with him in peace. The chair began to shake. Harry watched Hermione as she want wizzing off towards someone else again. "Fred and George really outdid themselves this time."  
  
Lee saw Hermione as she and her chair rammed into Harry. "She could have a great career as a human bludger."  
  
George laughed. "Nah, she should be a beater. I can just see her now, plowing down anyone that gets in her way...sending a bludger flying towards Snape's nether areas.."  
  
"Wait a minute, we're beaters," said Fred, stating the obvious.  
  
"You're right! And we haven't done any of that."  
  
"One more thing on our to do list."  
  
"Right above sending Draco a lifetime subscription to Teenage Witch's Weekly," said George.  
  
  
*************************************  
  
Professor McGonagall had watched Miss Granger zoom about the Great Hall for almost all of breakfast. She glanced around the room, first at the Weasley twins, who blinked innocently back at her, and then at the ghosts, who looked just as innocent, though they were involved in an arguement of some sort.  
  
Giving up trying to find out who the culprit was, McGonagall went back to finishing her eggs on toast.  
  
Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves were waving their wands frantically underneath the table while they recited spells, each trying to send Hermione to either Ron or Harry, much to the amusement of the fat friar.  
  
The result was Hermione's chair clattering violently, a crack starting to appear in the back of it as it tried to go in two seperate directions and succeeded in going neither.  
  
Draco smirked at Hermione as she tried to dig her heels into the ground to stop the chair from rattling. "Probably about to collapse from the weight. I'm surprised it hasn't before," he said to Crabbe and Goyle.  
  
Harry heard him. "If you are going to talk aobut Hermione, you might want to keep your voice down to a minimum instead of sounding like you have a mega-phone permanently attached to your lips."  
  
George and Fred heard Harry as they passed by to help themselves to a platter of apple tarts.  
  
"Huh, more like his arse, if you know what I mean," said George.  
  
"Really? I was thinking more along the lines of one of our infamous whoppie cushions," stated Fred. They snickered along with Harry.  
  
"Oh, no need to waste your time thinking up clever comebacks, Harry. I'm not insulting the mudblood. Just her stack of textbooks."  
  
Draco pointed to Hermione, who as usual had a stack of books in her lap. "With all that load in her lap, I'm surprised the chair hasn't gone straight through the floor to the basement."  
  
Harry was about to retort, but Ron mouthed "ignore it, ignore it" and pointed towards Hermione who was now waving her wand around trying to get the chair to stop rattling. It was hard because the chair kept rocketing off in one direction, then switching and going the opposite way, making it impossible for Hermione to concentrate on any spell.  
  
Harry and Ron both pointed their wands at her chair and muttered their counter-spells at the same time. It was too late, however. The chair exploded into splinters of wood, leaving Hermione sitting on her bottom in the middle of the Great Hall.   
  
Some students stopped on their way out from breakfast to look at her-but only a few. Hogwarts was a magic school after all. Exploding chairs? What else was new?  
  
Only Ron, Harry, and the twins paid Hermione much attention. All four of them came over to ask if she was alright as she dusted herself off and stood back up.  
  
link:http://pub39.ezboard.com//ffictionalley.frm421  
----this chapter has ended----- 


	4. More Pranks

@All Bets Are On...@  
(4/?)More pranks  
by:GoldenSilence   
link:http://pub39.ezboard.com/ugoldenquill.showPublicProfile?language=EN  
e-mail:flipgal14@yahoo.com   
category:Romance/humor   
keywords:Hermione/Ron, Hermione/Harry, Hermione/George spoilers:PS/SS,CoS, GoF  
rating:PG   
summary: Nearly Headless Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves all have their own opinions(not to mention their own bets) of who in gryffindor is going to get together. Harry/Hermione? Ron/Hermione?Someone else/Hermione? Now that would be telling.;)   
disclaimer:This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. PervertedMyrtle! is property of me..j/k  
------  
A/N=Whee..sorry this took awhile to update, people-but working on five stories at once leaves you kind of winded! And since only two or three people answered, I'm gonna ask again-does anyone want me to write multiple endings? Or should I just write one ending featuring one couple?   
Wow. You should have seen me when I woke up in the morning, checked the computer, and saw all those new reviews for chapter3-my eyes went this biig0.o  
All opinions and ideas are welcome! Thanks to "san19mp" for the ideas about Krum and Draco. Draco will be more in this fanfic later. Note to all you Krum fans out there(about the same amount as the George/Hermione fans out there, I'm sure.:)) Krum will be present in the next chapter and he will NOT be an abuser, horrible guy, rapist, or anything of the sort-his personality is a bit hard to get down,though, so I hope I do him justice.  
  
IMPORTANT:This chapter features more about Harry/Hermione and George/Hermione-Ron/Hermione fans, don't dispair! I will have lots more on them in the next chapter!  
  
  
------  
  
If anyone would have thought the ghosts had fulfilled their meddling ways during breakfast, they would have been far from right. It was only ten o'clock, the first class of the day had ended, and the ghost's bet was nowhere near over.  
  
In fact, floating around the fourth staircase's foyer, Myrtle, Peeves, and Nearly Headless Nick watched the door to the classroom open and the swarm of children crowd the halls with an unprecedented amount of glee. For a whole two hours, all three ghosts had endured the customary boredom that came with being..well..dead.   
  
They could have been having fun going into one of the classes and causing chaos in the name of matchmaking, but Nick and Moaning Myrtle refused to because they didn't want to get in any trouble with the teachers. And though Peeves kept on looming dangerously close to Professor Binn's classroom (the one that it just so happened Hermione, Harry, and Ron were in) Moaning Myrtle and Nick made sure he never so much as went through the doorway either.  
  
But now with class over and an abundance of kids roaming the halls, the ghost's minds were filled with pranks to turn the bet in their favor-all in the twenty minutes the students had between class to allow such mayhem to take place. The ghosts intended to make use of every last second.  
  
Or they would as soon as they discovered exactly which anonymous student chatting with their friends was Hermione, Ron, or Harry.  
  
Nick peered over the wooden railing of at the students below. "Which one is Hermione?"  
  
"Easy! Frizzball always sticks out. Look for Potter the Rotter and Freckles," stated Peeves.  
  
"From up here all I can see are the backs of people's robes. One cannot tell who somebody is just from looking at the back of their robes," said Nearly Headless Nick stiffly.  
  
Peeves glanced down at the seemingly sea of black and nodded. "Your wimpyness is right. They all look the same."  
  
Myrtle joined Peeves and Nick in peering down at the Hogwart's students and her eyes immediately zoomed to focus on the back of one person's robes in less time then it took the other two ghosts to blink. "Oh look..there's Harry!"   
  
Nearly Headless Nick and Peeves both stared at her. "I don't want to know, I don't want to know," muttered Nearly Headless Nick. Peeves grinned. "Pimply wimply has a thing for dimply-"  
  
"I REALLY don't want to know," Nick cut in before Peeve's could finish whatever new rhyme he had thought of. "Errmm, Myrtle? Can you tell which one's Hermione?"  
  
"Oh, of course," said Myrtle with an air of superiority, and Nick was relieved to see that this time she didn't have to do any entensive back of robe watching to find Hermione. "She's the one with books piled up higher than her face."  
  
*********  
  
The target..ahem..person in question, Hermione, did indeed have her face buried behind a massive, dangerously wobbling stack of books. And that was with other half of them buried in her bulging book bag, as well.   
  
The trio had split for their two different classes-Ron had Muggle Studies and Harry and Hermione had Professor Binn's History-so therefor, Ron was nowhere in sight.   
  
Harry and Seamus, however, were each on one side of Hermione, the former of which was insisting on walking sideways with his hands held out. When asked, Harry had explained his peculiar behavior by saying he didn't want to spend a year trying to dig Hermione out from under her pile of books when the "leaning tower" collapsed- which, he and Seamus both swore, it would do any minute.  
  
*********  
  
Peeves may have been way up on the fourth foyer, staircases and staircases away from Hermione, but that didn't mean his wand wasn't just as handy. Waving it in the air, he recited a spell. The only spell he seemed to know, as it was almost the exactly same one he had done to Hermione's chair at breakfast earlier that morning. With a few minor tweaks, of course.  
  
"The leaning tower" did not fall down as Seamus and Harry had predicted. Instead, it turned into a tornado of books, several of them flying out of Hermione's arms to smack unsuspecting students in the noses and chins as she was zoomed against her will once again towards yet another young man.  
  
Both Myrtle and Nick gaped in horror as they saw exactly what Peeve's wand had done, and even Peeve's smirk looked slightly less than usual as he witnessed just to whom exactly he had sent Hermione flying across the hall. Nobody, to be precise. Some first year kid who had was in the process of blowing his nose.  
  
Myrtle looked at Nick. "Maybe it's because his wand is broken," she said, searching for a possible explanation for Peeves screwing up his magical spell again.  
  
"Maybe it's because Peeves is holding it upside down," said Nick.  
  
"Peeves isn't holding the wand upside down! Peeves IS upside down," stated Peeves, whose feet were, true to his word, even with Nearly Headless Nick's and Moaning Myrtle's heads. His own head was busy sticking its tongue out from between the rung of the wooden railing at every last student that actually bothered to look up towards the fourth foyer.  
  
Nick groaned. At least he of all the ghosts knew how to use his wand-at least, he thought he did. He hoped he did......  
  
"Don't worry. I'll fix the spell," Moaning Myrtle said before Nick had a chance to get out his own wand and send Hermione towards Harry. Yanking out her wand, she muttered a spell similiar to Peeves and waved her wand in the student's direction.  
  
"There. Hermione will run into Ron in approximately ten seconds."   
  
Hermione now didn't have to have a spell on her to send her flying down the hall-she did it all of her own accord. It was hard not to when you had a disembodied head chasing you the length of the hall. Even if it was the disembodied head of a certain jolly old man in red.   
  
"What?" asked Myrtle indignantly upon seeing Nick and Peeves questioning looks. "Would you rather it was the easter bunny? Besides, you have to admit, the whole white beard is very scary."  
  
Hermione ran as hard as she could..until the force of running into somebody stopped her. She turned to look up at who she had bumped into and saw..Ron?  
  
Myrtle gave a satisfied smile. A satisfied smile that vanished the minute the spell wore off and the disembodied head dissapeared into thin air, leaving Hermione standing next to Ron. Hermione next to Ron was a good thing. A good thing when two certain red haired twins weren't just walking towards the two of them with their own best friend in tow-which, they unfortunately were.  
  
"Freckles isn't alone!" hissed Peeves, distracted at last from sticking his tongue out at random students as he saw the twins were not that far away from Ron and Hermione.  
  
"Well, it looked like he was," Myrtle defended herself.  
  
Nick shook his head. "You don't know the meaning of alone. You're always surrounded by teenage boys!"  
  
"I beg your pardon?," Myrtle asked haughtily. "I'll have you know I used to haunt the girl's bathroom too."  
  
This seemed to be all the cue Peeves needed to begin singing his song again. "Pimply wimply is ick! She has an obsession with prefect's broomsti-"  
  
"Put a lid on it," snapped Nick and Myrtle.  
  
**************  
  
George and Fred Weasley, along with Lee Jordan, were walking to their next classes via the usual route when they saw both Hermione and Ron up ahead. Or actually more like Hermione running into Ron up ahead. Running from..the head of Santa Clause? All three cracked up laughing.   
  
It had to be, George figured, some stupid first years idea of a prank. Too bad he hadn't thought it up first. To use on Draco, not Hermione, of course. He would get Hermione into his arms on his own account..no pranks involved..not too many, anyway.  
  
"Whooa. The Weasley Animal Magnetism is working overtime today," said George to Fred and Lee as he pointed out Hermione running into Ron.   
  
Lee ran his hand over his nose. "You mean your cologne..ackk."  
  
George grinned. "That's not my cologne, that's me and Fred's new invention, isn't it Fred?"  
  
Fred nodded. "Yup. Stinking Serenading Dungbombs."  
  
"What would you want them to sing for?" asked Jordan.  
  
"More annoying," said George.  
  
"Just imagine George singing an opera while trying to brush his teeth and viola! You have the Stinking Serenading Dungbomb," put in Fred helpfully. "Except George doesn't explode," he said almost sorrowfully, glancing at his twin.   
  
"Yet," added George.  
  
Lee snickered. "No wonder you two haven't got girlfriends."  
  
"Neither have you," pointed out George and Fred.   
  
"Yeah, but I still have more experience than either of you when it comes to dating," Lee said defensively.  
  
"With what? A pillow?" snorted George.  
  
Lee decided the conversation was taking a too personal turn and changed the topic as he and the twins jostled their way between the many other students to get near Ron and Hermione.  
  
"I still can't believe you like her, George." Lee looked slyly towards Hermione.  
  
George nearly spit out the combination of three Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans that he was chewing (licorice, peppermint, and orange.) How had Lee figured it out? Ugh. If it was that obvious, he was going to have to work a little harder on hiding his feelings. Otherwise not only would Hermione know-so would Ron and Harry. And that was something he didn't want them knowing..not right then.   
  
"What? Me? No. No way! You've got me all wrong," George protested weakly.  
  
"Riiight." Fred shook his head. "Oh, give it up, George. Me and Lee aren't exactly the three blind mice, you know. It's pretty obvious."  
  
George looked from Fred to Lee. "Umm..actually, it would be two."  
  
"See? You're already correcting the way we talk!," exclaimed Lee. "You like her." They were rapidly closing in on Hermione and Ron-George feverently hoped Hermione hadn't overheard anything, as she was within a distance where she could.  
  
Fred nodded wisely. "Next thing, you'll be noticing grammar errors. Then, it's only a mattter of time before you start snogging Hermione behind Hogwarts, A History."  
  
George was glad they had finally reached Hermione and Ron. Honestly, didn't Lee and Fred ever mind their own business? Not that George did either, come to think of it..he was just invading in on Ron and Ron's crush, after all.  
  
"I can't believe you didn't see it Ron! I swear, it was absolutely disgusting. The disembodied head.."  
  
"Of Santa Claus," finished George, stepping up beside Hermione and Ron, along with Fred (Jordan had departed to go to his own next class-and to catch up with Alicia, George figured.)  
  
Hermione felt sheepish. "Well, still-it was quite frightening! Especially when it just appears behind you from out of nowhere and starts running you down the hall."  
  
Ron sighed. The one time Hermione's afraid of something and she decides to run into me. Why couldn't she have better aim and run into my arms instead of my stomach? It's not my fault I'm tall. Then, when I finally think I'll be able to get to comfort her, my whole sodding family has to show up..the only other Weasley currently at Hogwarts that isn't here is Ginny. He knew it was useless to try and tell the twins to go away. If he did, he would have to have a reason for doing so-and well, his reason wasn't exactly one he was going to admit to.  
  
"Great. Next thing you know, you'll be imagining ghosts like Percy does," said Fred.  
  
"Well, you can't blame him. You gave him quite a scare. Next time you break into a locked house at three in the morning, try to remember that your window is in the back of the house, not the front."  
  
Fred gave George a frosty glare, obviously emberassed. "Oh, shut up."  
  
Of course, George being the kind to all siblings person that he was, that only convinced him to continue. "Though, I really can't see how you sounded likea ghost..I was thinking more along the lines of a pregnant elephant. Just exactly how much did you have to drink at that party anyway?"  
  
Hermione tried to hold back a smile, but didn't succeed. Fred and George's mock arguement was fun to watch. At least for her it was. She stole a glance at Ron, who seemed to be scowling. But then, Ron hadn't been a very good mood this morning either, Hermione reminded herself. It was just the whole Krum thing-and her brief sit by the Weasley twins at breakfast. He was probably sulking.  
  
"Wow, George. For a minute there, you reminded me of good ol' mum..minus the frying pan," retorted Fred, trying to save face.  
  
"Were you guys ever innocent?" asked Hermione. Ron seemed to have gone out of the conversation altogether and was simply watching with a stony expression.   
  
"Yup, " George told her seriously. "When we were asleep."  
  
Ron finally spoke and Hermione detected a note of anger to match the sarcasm in his voice. He was mad at his brothers for something-but what?  
  
"Oh no you weren't. I still remember the time we went camping and you both rolled over in your sleeping bags and banged me into the corner of a kettle."  
  
"Accident, I swear!" said Fred in protest.  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Let me guess, you were aiming for Percy instead?"  
  
George gave her a grin. "You read my mind."  
  
For some reason unbeknowst to her, his smile caused Hermione to blush-and caused Ron to scowl even more.  
  
*********  
  
Myrtle was scowling almost as much as Ron. "This is NOT working!"  
  
Nearly Headless Nick, seeing his chance, used it. One wave of his wand and Hermione was going straight off towards Harry, struggling to keep her books from spilling out of her arms. As soon as he saw that Hermione was with a foot of Harry, Nick waved his wand again and the floor near them both was covered in slippery water.  
  
Hermione slipped and slid-straight into Harry, as Nick had expected.   
  
"Where'd you get water?" asked Myrtle incredously.   
  
"You of all people should know." Nick grinned. "I borrowed it from the girl's bathroom."  
  
**********  
  
Hermione glanced up to see who had caught her and found herself staring into a pair of bright green eyes. She was standing upright now-albeit still slipping around, but Harry refused to remove his arms from around her. Not that Hermione minded. The water was still on the floor as slippery as ever. If Harry had let go, she would have gone falling down in a heartbeat. Not that that was the only reason she didn't want him to let go..  
  
Feeling extremely confused as was warranted to a girl who had been flown and pushed into more guys then she needed, Hermione began trying to make her way across the slippery floor, getting out of Harry's grip so she could try to pull him away from the puddle of water in addition to herself.  
  
It was then she noticed two red heads watching. Two red heads she had left minutes ago when she went zooming across the floor. Harry noted them as well.  
  
"How come wherever you go lately, they keep popping up beside you like that? " asked Harry, more to himself than Hermione.   
  
Hermione grinned wryly. "I'd say it was the Weasley Animal Magnetism, but I'm afraid I'm not a Weasley. Maybe they're trying to blackmail me into helping them T.P the library?"  
  
"That sounds like something they'd be up to," said Harry as he tried to manuaver himself to keep both him and Hermione from slipping head over heels into the puddle.  
  
"I give it a ten!" said Fred as he observed them both.  
  
"Nah. Two points off for them not wearing any ice skates," said George.  
  
Hermione glared at him. "If I wasn't slipping, I'd turn you into a toad." George and Fred both gave her infuriating grins and then walked off, presumably to their next class.  
  
At that very moment, absorbed in talking to George, Hermione at last did what she had been fearing she would do, she fell on her derrier. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one that fell down into the puddle. Harry, still holding her arm, went right down with her, causing a bit of a splash in the twin's direction as he got his robes soaked.   
  
Even more unfortunately (and uncomfortably) Harry didn't just fall into the puddle, he fell on top of Hermione.  
  
"Alright. That wasn't my wand. Who just knocked Hermione over?"  
  
Back up on the fourth foyer, Nick glared at Myrtle. "This better not have been part of your plan."  
  
Myrtle's eyes widened. "It wasn't! I swear! Besides, why would I want Harry to fall on top of her? I'm for Ron, remember?"   
  
Nick was convinced. He wouldn't have been nearly as much so if he could have seen Myrtle crossing her fingers behind her back. Hey, what could she say, the view of the back of Harry's robes all swished around him like that was not a bad one from up here.  
  
Nick glared at Peeves next. "Was it you then, Peeves?"  
  
Peeves, now blowing rasberrys, shook his head. "Uhuh. I would have put Potter that Rotter on the bottom. Give him a concussion that way."  
  
"How do you know that?"   
  
"Experience." Peeves gave a rather nasty grin as he remembered all the broken limbs he had caused in his lifetime.  
  
  
**********  
  
Hermione and Harry stood, soaked through and through and apprehensive, at the door that lead to Snape's dungeon. Harry couldn't help studying Hermione discreetly-her robes, now completely wet, hung about her in a most becoming fashion, showing the curves that their usual spaciousness managed to cover. Don't stare, Don't stare, he had to keep telling himself over and over. Harry focused his eyes on a spot on the wall.  
  
"If I had known we had potions next, I wouldn't have run," said Hermione dismally, shaking one of her textbooks to get the water out of it with one hand and with the other trying to wring out her hair.  
  
"If I had known we had potions next, I would have skipped it altogether in favor of standing next to the fireplace in the common room," said Harry with a shake of his head which sent droplets of water flying everywhere.   
  
"Alright. We have to get this over with sooner or later. What's the worst Snape can do to us for being late, after all?"  
  
Teeth chattering, Hermione put her fingers on the rusty, old fashioned door ring and pulled.   
  
"Oh, I dunno. Probably disembowel us," said Harry as they entered Potions.   
  
There was no way Snape was going to let Harry and Hermione sneak in to sit next to Ron, Hermione realized as she saw Snape's unpleasant leer as he took in both of them and their sopping wet robes. No, Snape would make sure their entrance was about as inconspicious as Professor Flitwick on stilts.  
  
link:  
--end of chapter here--- 


	5. Arguements and Other Mishaps

@All Bets Are On@  
  
(5/?)Arguements and Other Mishaps  
  
by:GoldenSilence  
  
link:http://pub39.ezboard.com/ugoldenquill.showPublicProfile?language=EN  
  
e-mail:flipgal14@yahoo.com  
  
category:Romance/humor  
  
keywords:Hermione/Ron, Hermione/Harry, Hermione/George spoilers:PS/SS,CoS, GoF  
  
rating:PG  
  
summary: Nearly Headless Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves all have their own opinions(not to mention their own bets) of who in gryffindor is going to get together. Harry/Hermione? Ron/Hermione?Someone else/Hermione? Now that would be telling.;)  
  
disclaimer:This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. PervertedMyrtle! is property of me..j/k  
  
-----------  
  
A/N= I'm still gathering votes on if you want just one ending or three different ones..so be sure and tell me which you prefer!! R/Hr fans, this is your chapter, so enjoy it..H/Hr fans, Harry's not going anywhere. He comes back for the next chapter-which is, yup, you guessed it, H/Hr alot.  
  
Draco/Hermione fans, he's heree! But sorry, the guy is only a temporary love fix..still, he DOES get to feature in half the story. Not bad, eh?  
  
And G/Hr fans..all I have to say is..enjoy the moments with the twins! This story wouldn't be the same without 'em! Oh yes, I'm not usually the one to do shameless plugs, but if anyone really likes Draco/Hermione, please check out my The Corpse Behind The Hourglass and tell me what you think. I would more than appreciate it.:)  
  
IMPORTANT:  
  
I am not showing Hermione's PoV much at all-specifically not when she's with George, Ron, or Harry. Why? Because obviously I don't believe that a fifteen year old girl has fallen head over heels in love with every last one of them. There will be three different endings(and not the usual varied where everything is the same except for the name of the guy) and in each one, Hermione will make a different choice and you will get to finally see what she thinks. Other than that, mum's the word!  
  
This story brought a huge smile to my face when I was writing it-hope it does the same for you!  
  
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Hermione entered the classroom, praying feverently that Snape had suddenly gone blind, that Fred and George had apparated on top of his head, or perhaps that he had decided to make a run for the faculty bathroom- because only one of those three things would stop him from noticing both her and Harry.  
  
Notice them he most certainly did. And so did all of the class, turning around in their seats to stare at Hermione and Harry dripping water all over the cobblestone floor.  
  
The expression on Snape's face as he surveyed them said everything Harry and Hermione needed to know. They were doomed. Doooomed. Forget being as inconspicious as Professor Flitwick on stilts..as inconspicious as  
  
Hagrid (not exactly the king of diminutiveness) wearing platforms and dancing to the disco was more like it.  
  
Their entrance couldn't have been more obvious if a howler combined with one of Pansy's tantrums and a Filbuster Firecracker had announced the whole thing.  
  
Relishing the moment, Snape announciated each word he spoke slowly and clearly, as if the whole class was deaf and incapable of understanding him unless he did so.  
  
"My, my, if it isn't Mister Potter and Miss Granger. And where have you two been?"  
  
On a long and far journey to remove the wand from your butt, Hermione wanted to retort, but not being one to get snippy with teachers, she kept her mouth in a thin line.  
  
"Intresting," continued Snape. " Let me guess, you got so carried away with your passion for each other, you not only forgot to be on time to potions, but you fell into the lake to boot? MOST unfortunate."  
  
"Sorry to burst your bubble and all, but we were just late," said Harry, opening his mouth in spite of the warning look coming from Hermione.  
  
"No particular reason?" asked Snape, his lips curving upwards.  
  
"None," said Harry boldly.  
  
"Seventy points from Gryffindor for impertinence and for being late. And thirty more points," Snape glanced at Harry with pure malice. "For lying to a teacher." Several Slytherins were snickering, and none to quietly at that. The Gryffindors were grimacing, as was Hermione when she counted up the points they had just lost for their house. One hundred. They might as well have just skipped class altogether.  
  
Hermione was furious. "Begging your pardon, professor, but he's not lying."  
  
"Indeed? Then what is your story, Miss Granger?"  
  
Hermione sucked in her breath, suddenly realizing what a pickle she was in. She couldn't very well tell Snape that she and Harry had happened to fall in a puddle that had just happened to appear. Might as well tell Snape they had gotten held up by a giant clown that had escaped from the circus.  
  
  
  
If it had been in Draco Malfoy's nature to grin, he would have been doing so. But it wasn't. Because Malfoys never grinned. They sneered, scowled, and looked devestatingly sexy and handsome, but they did NOT grin.  
  
  
  
"You see, it's a bit hard to believe you when you seem to be so speechless. Since whatever it is doesn't seem to bear telling, I must assume that what you were doing was not," Snape smiled. "Something that had anything in the least to do with gaining knowledge."  
  
"Oh, yes it did," whispered Harry in Hermione's ear. "I learned that it's better to picture Snape with a vulture hat and handbag when I'm in front of him then when he's not around."  
  
"Add the frilly fuschia dress Pansy wore to the Yule ball and you've got yourself an image," whispered Hermione back, trying to both ingore Snape and keep from grinning.  
  
"Knowledge," continued Snape, glaring at the both of them and causing them to cease whispering immediately. "That you seem to lose whenenever you around each other. Which is why, I believe it is best for both you and your apparell"- he paused and the Slytherins once again snickered. "If one of you sits elsewhere. Granger, go over by Malfoy. Potter, you can stay by Weasley."  
  
Draco instantly stopped smirking and looked at Hermione in disgust. No doubt this was the nearest Professor Snape had ever come to giving him punishment.  
  
" Lovely. Malfoy looks like he just ate a pack of sour lemons," muttered Hermione to Harry.  
  
Harry glanced at Draco. "Nah, more like he just got told Hagrid's teaching home economics."  
  
"And was force fed two baskets of Hagrid's treacle fudge," added Hermione, but stopped the conversation short there, for Snape was giving them both a pointed look that told them they had better stop yapping. Taking the hint, she and Harry walked off towards their seperate seats on opposite ends of the classroom.  
  
" Do me a favor and accidentally trod on his toe a few times for me, will you?" whispered Ron, not looking at Hermione as she passed by. She had a horrible, sinking feeling Draco's toes weren't the only ones Ron felt like smashing. From the way Ron had given Harry a glare to rival even Snape's, she had no doubt he was ever so slightly upset by what Snape (and Ron himself) thought had most likely happened.  
  
Busy soaking up the fury coming from both Harry and Hermione, Snape  
  
failed to notice a pearlwhite, translucent hand reach through the wall nearest to where Hermione usually sat and tip a bottle containing a red liquid swiftly into her cauldron. Unfortunately, no other student noticed, either.  
  
If they had, things would have turned out differently. But they didn't. Besides, with ghosts running rampant playing pranks in the name of the ultimate bet, things almost uninviteably would not only have turned out different, they would have turned out worse.  
  
*******  
  
Nick grinned as he drifted back into the empty dungeon next door, where more of a similiarly pink colored potion was sitting in a vast cauldron.  
  
Love potions always did the trick. Hah! She and Harry would be hugging each other soon-no more water from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom needed.  
  
Nick wasn't too keen to do that particular summoning spell for the water again. In his ears, he could still hear the first year shrieking when she sat down on the toilet seat only to find the water rush out from it, go over her head, and fly out the door.  
  
A scatter of different ingredients that had been crushed and mixed to make the love potion still lay on the table nearby. Nick simply floated over and scooped them all up into a bag, along with the book "Most Potent Potions" he had been reading.  
  
He should have examined page twenty-four of the book (which contained the list of ingredients required to make the love potion) a bit more carefully. Because if he had, he would have noticed that he had not brewed up the normal love potion, but a version that had an affect on its victims that was much more...speedy.  
  
Not only that, Nick's potion, in Hermione's cauldron, set for her and Harry to taste test, was now being moved on its way towards a very different person's seat..Draco Malfoy's.  
  
Nearly Headless Nick, peering into the classroom one more time to make sure the potion was right where it should be ( namely, next to Hermione and Harry) saw Hermione moving her cauldron towards Draco's and muttered a curse he hadn't said since he had gotten his head chopped at with the blunt axe.  
  
Why couldn't things ever go according to plan?  
  
************  
  
"So," whispered Draco (though he probably could have yelled it, seeing as Snape was mysteriously ignorant of any noise or chaos Draco caused during his class) to Hermione as she took her seat next to him and set up her own cauldron. "How come I didn't get to end up the lucky one you fell into the lake with? Good thing there's no lake here, or with all my charm, I suppose you'd drag me into it, eh?"  
  
Well, Draco obviously wasn't wasting any time in bringing out the razor sharp sarcasm that made you want to slap his face, thought Hermione.  
  
"The only way you'll get drenched," she said, "is if I tip you into a cauldron." Hermione took one look at the potion that Draco was pouring from his cauldron to hers. The whole thing was now a sickly sort of pale pink.  
  
"Ugh. Speaking of which, if you did fall in, you'd probably die." Hermione studied the textbook opened out in front of them. "It says here that the potion is supposed to turn yellow, not pink. I thought potions was your best subject."  
  
Draco languidly leaned back in his chair. "Aha, making an effort to find out more about me, are you?"  
  
"No," said Hermione shortly. "Avoiding it, actually."  
  
Draco joined Hermione in stirring the potion and they worked in stony silence for a few minutes before he spoke again. "Goodness, someone had better restrain Weasley," Draco drawled. "He looks like he's about to cut off his own arm."  
  
Hermione turned to look in Ron's direction and it was indeed true, Ron was busy slicing with his knife-at anything but the roots he was supposed to be cutting up. So far, an end of the table was already missing.  
  
"Funny, I think he's aiming for you," Hermione said through clenched teeth, trying not to let Draco get on her nerves. Only ten more minutes of class. Only ten more....  
  
"Right," said Snape as he walked around, examining the concotions bubbling in the cauldrons. "It's time to taste test your potions. I don't think it needs to be said that if you have miscalculated or mismeasured your ingredients by so much as a single unicorn's hair, you will find the side effects-" Snape's eyes strayed towards Neville here-"Most grevious."  
  
"You messed up our potion," hissed Draco at her.  
  
"Me? How could I have? There wasn't anything in my cauldron to begin with, remember?"  
  
"Oh yes there was. You call a bunch of vomit colored stuff nothing?"  
  
"It doesn't matter. It's too late now. Whatever happens , happens," said Hermione.  
  
"I just hope it turns you into a bouncing ferret," she added.  
  
Hermione swallowed the potion quickly, ready to turn into a toad or some such nast thing without a moment's notice, but to her immense relief, absolutely nothing happened other than a curious warm feeling as it settled in her stomach.  
  
Or, at least, absolutely nothing happened so far.  
  
*********  
  
Harry sat alongside a furious Ron. A furious and Harry admitted, every so slightly scary Ron. Harry scooted a few steps further away from his best friend. Ron with a knife when he was mad was not a good thing. He reminded Harry vaguely of Mrs. Weasley when she had found out Fred and George had used their dad's enchanted car to rescue Harry.  
  
Harry knew who Ron was so upset at and he was willing to bet it wasn't Hermione. It was him. Ron had probably taken one glance at Harry and Hermione sopping wet and jumped to his own outlandish conclusions.  
  
And with Ron, outlandish conclusions could be anything..including several things Harry didn't yet want to even think of.  
  
"Ron?," ventured Harry as he watched his best friend chop away like a mad chef. "Me and Hermione weren't...we weren't.."  
  
"Weren't what?" said Ron. "Got to be a bit more specific than that."  
  
"We weren't- well, you know- what Snape said."  
  
"Uhuh. Then how come you're both wet? And don't tell me that it's from the rain outside, because it's so cold I think there are actually icicles growing on Snape's eyebrows."  
  
Harry raised his own eyebrows. "You sure that's not just part of his usual appearance?"  
  
"No," said Ron. "Because if it was usual, he'd have icicles growing out of his nose as well." He went back to his violent chopping.  
  
"So what really happened between Hermione and you?" asked Ron, less angry now (or at least seeming to be, he wasn't chopping the table anymore-only a bowl.)  
  
"We slipped on a puddle outside one of the classrooms," said Harry truthfully. " And that's all that happened, promise."  
  
"Hah!" snorted Ron loudly and then upon seeing Snape, lowered his voice. "Don't you have a better excuse than that?"  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. Wasn't Ron being just a tad melodramatic about this whole thing? Honestly, Hermione was right. Ron could be so pigheaded when it came to what he thought had happened and what had actually happened. It would make a splendid play, Harry could just see it now..The Puddle that Launched A Thousand Lies (and Snape's Forray Into Cross Dressing.)  
  
"Oh yes, now that you mention it. What me and Hermione really did was stop by the kitchens before class and decide to clean a whole set of dishes to make the house elve's job easier. Then, Hermione , startled when she saw a polka dotted elephant, accidentally slipped on a piece of soap and fell into the sink, at which point I decided to pull her out and tragically fell in too. There, is that stupid enough sounding for you?  
  
Ron just glared, tight lipped, ahead.  
  
"Honestly, Ron, Hermione doesn't even like me." Not a complete lie, Harry comforted himself. I like her. "If she did, you'd be the first to know."  
  
"Really?" Ron cheered up slightly.  
  
"No," said Harry, shaking his head. "I'd tell Parvarti first, naturally, because I just love having gossip spread all over the whole school. Of course it'd be you, Ron. You'd do the same with me, wouldn't you?"  
  
"Yeah..yeah, of course," said Ron, brightening up. " Figures, just like Snape to emberass you in front of the whole class like that. You should have shook your hair as you walked in and gotten him good and soaked, Harry. That way maybe he'd freeze to death."  
  
Snape blocked off any further use of conversation. "Some people should try to pay atttention during class," he said loudly from behind Ron's shoulder, causing Ron to jump up and accidentally swing the knife he had been holding in an dangerous arc. "Or they may find themselves in detention."  
  
The bell rang at that moment. Snape sighed and raised his hands. "Class dismissed. A ten page essay on the effects of your potion is due tomorrow. And Miss Granger and Mister Potter?"  
  
Hermione and Harry stopped in their tracks. "Next time you're in the halls, kindly try to keep your hands off each other and devote your attention instead to being on time."  
  
That was when the potion Hermione and Draco had swallowed minutes before finally brought about the reaction that went with it.  
  
"Excuse me, professor?" said Draco as the other students filed out.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Hermione doesn't deserve to be insulted. I demand you take back your comment at once. This biased treatment of the Gryffindors has got to-"  
  
Draco clamped a hand over his mouth, horrified. What was happening to him?  
  
He rushed out of the classroom speedily, only to run into the very person he had been hoping to avoid.  
  
**********  
  
Harry and Ron watched in puzzlement as Hermione walked off in the opposite direction from them both-and from their next class. "What are you doing?" shouted Ron at her retreating back.  
  
Hermione in return answered calmly . "Going to be with my true love, of course."  
  
Harry and Ron stared at her, then as it hit them, they nodded at each other in understanding. "The library."  
  
Hermione, finding the one she had been looking for, grabbed hold of his robes to stop him on the spot. She smiled at Draco's face dreamily while he looked down at her in horror.  
  
"Thanks for sticking up for me, Draco. I appreciate it." What on earth was she saying? Hermione was shocked. It was as if she had no control over her speech. Or her thoughts, she realized suddenly, as she stared at Malfoy and found herself privately praising his good looks.  
  
"What I mean is, I can stick up for myself, thanks alot, you pompous-"  
  
"Wonderful man." Hermione shook her head and tried again, her cheeks flushing pink. By now, a good number of the students in the halls were staring at them with interest, including Harry and Ron (who had both quickly come to realize Hermione's was not pining away for a dusty collection of books) as well as the Weasley twins.  
  
"No!" she said, every bit as horrified as Draco now. "I didn't mean that! What I meant was, DON'T YOU DARE STICK UP FOR ME.." Hermione began yelling loudly.  
  
Then her face switched back to dreamy again, in spite of her best efforts for it not to do so. "Just because you like me," she finished softly.  
  
"What the bloody???" began Draco.  
  
"Now, now, don't feel insecure, I like you too." Hermione forced her hand into Draco's.  
  
Standing next to him, Harry could practically hear Ron saying evil git, evil git, evil git in a monotone.  
  
"What are you on, mudblood? I don't like you!" yelled Draco, his face as red as Hermione's. "I love you." That was when the bad poetry kicked in.  
  
And boy, was it ever bad. Worse than Fred's attempt to recite three little black sheep with a rose in his mouth had been (and that had ended with the rose going halfway down his throat when Angelina told him to stuff it.)  
  
"I love you with all my heart, more than the-" Draco's face looked convulted. "@#$%^&!" he swore angrily, trying to control this strange feeling that was taking over him.  
  
  
  
"More than the birds that sing."  
  
"...Whoever the hell is playing this prank is gonn-"  
  
"More than a king loves a queen. " Draco turned towards the chuckling George and Fred with a murderous expression on his face. "You Weasleys, this is all your doing, isn't it?"  
  
"So much that I-"  
  
"..Am going to wring both of your necks together.."  
  
"-Can't stand the thought of life-"  
  
"After I send you both flying out a window,.."  
  
"-Without you-"  
  
"..beaten up by set of plastic forks, with a bunch of tea dumped over your heads.....  
  
"-I am nothing but-"  
  
"....forced to watch Dobby do the hula on your eyeballs..."  
  
"I say," interjected George. "I may be in the minority here, but isn't it a bit hard to watch someone when they're dancing on your eyeballs? Better say you want him to do the limbo under our armpits, instead."  
  
"Or you could always have him break out tap dancing on our backs," piped up Fred.  
  
"Or do ballet on their toes," suggested Harry. Ron said nothing, still clutching his fists.  
  
The murderous expression Draco had been shooting Fred, and George could have been considered a friendly smile compared to the one he was sending their way now. The potion forced him unto his knees in front of Hermione, who was still just standing still with her hands over her mouth-no doubt trying to prevent poetry similiar to Malfoy's from escaping.  
  
"Half alive. For the perfection that is you I -"  
  
"..torn into itty bitty pieces by a magical paper shredder..."  
  
"Now, now," said Ron sarcastically, looking a bit more relieved now that he realized the poetry part of this must have been someone's idea of a joke. "I realize how much you love Hermione, but that's really no reason to go to all the trouble of finding a paper shredder large enough for you to fit through...  
  
you can always just eat a Filbuster firecracker for the same effect."  
  
"Wow. Really?" asked George and Fred simultaneously.  
  
Harry grinned. "Not too sure Charlie's cooking doesn't do as much as well. Not too sure Charlie's cooking doesn't have one or two firecrackers in it, actually. That would explain those long, red things in the mash potatoes he made."  
  
"Mashed potatoes? You mean mashed rocks," muttered Fred.  
  
"I think those long, red things were just some pieces of licorice that Charlie put in to give the thing more flavor," said Ron thoughtfully.  
  
"Either that or Crookshanks jumped into the crock pot," said George (Hermione had spent a month or so at The Burrow that summer, and naturally, the cat had come with her, leaving behind a mound a hair wherever he went and causing Ron to exclaim that with all that shedding, Crookshanks should have gone completely bald.)  
  
"-Strive-" blurted out Draco, who had tried to get his emotions (and his voice) under control and failed miserably.  
  
"To chop off your ears and fed them to a hipogriff," he finished, glaring at Harry, Ron, Fred, and George by turns, making it clear as to just whom the message was intended.  
  
All four, however, pretended as if Draco was simply reciting the whole thing, poetry and nasty comments included, to Hermione.  
  
"Violence, violence," said Fred with a shake of his head. "Is that all teens can think of nowdays? I'm sure a batch of flowers she's allergic to would work much better."  
  
"I love you for all-"  
  
Draco struggled to get himself out of his kneeling position on one knee, but the minute he tried to get up, he simply fell right back down.  
  
"@##%!!"  
  
"eternity." Draco looked so miserable, Harry almost felt sorry for him. Almost, but not quite. Better to save any sympathy he had for Draco until after Ron had cursed him or beaten him up, one or the other of which, by the way Ron was clenching his fists and his wand, was going to happen very soon.  
  
"Encore, encore!!" uttered Seamus and Dean, both clapping vigorously as they passed Draco and Hermione.  
  
Then Draco did something that caused all the snickering and commenting students gathered 'round to shut their traps. At last finding himself able to get up from his kneeling position, he stood on his feet with a look of triumph...  
  
That lasted all of two seconds before he kissed Hermione full on the lips.  
  
**********  
  
From yet another landing on yet another staircase, Moaning Myrtle, Nearly Headless Nick (who had quickly recovered from being in such a quandary as to almost using Peeves's idea of locking both Hermione and Harry in a closet, he was so desperate for the love potion not to take effect), and Peeves watched Draco kissing Hermione, all three in as much shock as any number of the students.  
  
"Noo! One of you make him stop!" howled Myrtle, covering her eyes.  
  
"Oh, I don't see what you're on about," grumbled Nick, thoroughly put out by the failure of his previous experiment. "Draco's not going to stop wearing leather pants to Care of Magical Creatures just because he kissed another girl, you know."  
  
Peeves, a ghost of action (well, between his kind of action and the kind Myrtle wanted to have but wasn't going to get anytime soon, it was a tie), decided to take some. Floating down the set of stairs, he paused only to grab a litter of books from a first year, who uttered a startled exclamation, before floating back up again.  
  
Hovering on the landing directly above Draco and Hermione's heads, he got ready to drop the load of books on both of them.  
  
"Peeves!' yelled Nearly Headless Nick, exasperated.  
  
Peeves looked at him innocently, blinking his eyes. "What? He WAS from Hufflepuff."  
  
Nearly Headless Nick calmed down considerably once he realized Peeves hadn't stolen some Gryffindor's books. It wasn't his fault house loyality was important-or that the fat friar had spilled a whole apple pie on his new doublet yesterday.  
  
"Oh, well, in that case, alright. Just give them back when you're done."  
  
"Bwehehehe." Peeves, possessing the much envied quality of selective hearing, hadn't heard a word Nearly Headless Nick had said, he was too busy concentrating on the exact spot he was going to make the books hit. The kiss had already stopped (Hermione had slapped Draco full across the face the minute she came to her senses), but Peeves still dropped the books on both Hermione and Draco, anyway.  
  
Hermione stared at Draco, who stared right back. The effects of the potion, whatever it was, noted Hermione, were quickly fading. Ugh. I can't believe he just kissed me. If this is Fred and George's idea of a funny prank, they've gone too far. I've got enough trouble with telling Ron and Harry who I like without anyone else coming into the picture.  
  
"If you puke," Hermione said at last. "Do me a favor and puke towards the side. I don't fancy being covered in vomit."  
  
That was all Draco needed to hear. One last look at Hermione and he was off, running full speed towards either the boy's bathrooms or the infirmary, Hermione wasn't sure which.  
  
Feeling a good deal sick to her stomach herself, she began walking off alone in the direction of her next class, stopping only to pick up her books from where she had dropped them when Draco had begun reciting the horrible poetry.  
  
She didn't see three ghosts on the landing above, Nearly Headless Nick looking at Myrtle. "You switched their books? But what does it matter? They both have almost all the same classes, anyway. You DO realize that, don't you?"  
  
Myrtle's never answered, evidently having not realized just that. So what? At least Ron and Hermione would have time outside of class, just as much as Hermione and Harry had had when they had fallen into that puddle. Besides, her idea was sure to bring them together. Myrtle had happened to glance at the interior of the book and had seen a set of intials penciled inside a heart there. Of course, they just had to be Hermione's, didn't they??  
  
Too bad Moaning Myrtle had forgotten that she left her glasses in the prefect's bathroom that day.  
  
Too bad Ron, Harry, or Colin Creevey hadn't seen Hermione slap Draco full across the face-some moments deserve to be preserved on film.  
  
*******  
  
"There was one and only one highlight to that whole thing," said Ron angrily as he and Harry strolled to Transfigurations together (once they had heard the bell, they had decided to begin walking off towards class, leaving Hermione behind as she seemed to be preoccupied kissing Draco. They figured she would catch up with them soon...hopefully.) "And that was when I saw Malfoy's face after those books hit them. With his bruises, he was more colors than a string of christmas lights."  
  
"Very festive," said Harry with a wry grin.  
  
"Yeah." Ron gave a longing sigh. "Now if only we could find some way to stick him on top of a pine tree so he could never come down.."  
  
Ron looked back at Draco and Hermione meditatively, and Harry gave a cursory glance back at them as well. Both were now standing apart and Hermione was muttering something to Draco, at which point, he walked off in a huff.  
  
Harry felt relieved. Good. So it had just been someone's idea of a joke. Not that I thought Hermione would really kiss Draco of her own free will for a minute, he reassured himself, then remembered how queasy he had felt watching Draco recite poetry to Hermione, much less talk to her.  
  
Ugh. This won't do. Soon enough, you'll start turning into Ron and argueing with her all the time if you so much as see another guy stand within a foot of her. That's the one thing I've got going for me that Ron hasn't-I can comfort her when she's feeling down, whereas he just gets her more agitated.  
  
"But what-" persisted a terrible little voice inside him that wouldn't go away, "-if Hermione likes argueing with Ron? He only gets mad at her because he worries about her so much, you know. What if it's the same with her??  
  
Worrying about each other too much led to other things. Things that Ron had already told Harry he felt for Hermione.  
  
Harry snapped out of his reflective state at the sound of Ron's gloomy voice.  
  
"Books, rice, what's the difference? They're as good as married. Hope she doesn't make us call her Hermione Malfoy. Ugh. Even the name sounds horrible."  
  
"Who's married?" asked a curious voice from behind Harry and Ron. It turned out to belong to none other than Padma.  
  
"No one except Harry and Ron and their overactive imaginations," said Lee Jordan, coming up with the twins behind him, per usual.  
  
"Hermione married, honestly," said George (who, along with his twin and best friend seemed to be both overhearing and seeing everything exciting that happened with the ghosts' bets that day.) "Cho kissed you once, Harry and I don't seem to remember you two marching down any church aisle."  
  
"Not unless you count the cracking your voice made afterwards when she asked you to Hogsmeade as wedding bells," added Fred.  
  
"Sounded more like a tree being sawed down to me," put in George.  
  
"Unsympathetic," muttered Padma, as if she thought she understood Ron and Harry's calamity perfectly . "What was the last thing you loved?"  
  
Fred shrugged. "I dunno. Getting out of detention after making Professor Sprout have flowers grow out of her ears?"  
  
"I rest my case," said Ron. Too many siblings. Way too many siblings. And every one of them knows about my crush on Hermione. Apparently, it's so obvious even Padma knows.  
  
Wait a minute, realized Ron. Padma knows everything, obvious or not. She was the one that stalked Filch's cat in the middle of the night because she thought it looked like it was going to have kittens and wanted to find out the father. "C'mon, Harry, we had better get to class."  
  
Fred turned to George and Lee as Ron and Harry walked off. "What? Was it something I said?"  
  
"Duh," said Lee. "You forgot to put in the part about transfiguring her feet into roots. Genius, if I do say so myself."  
  
"No, you should have pointed out that the flowers growing out of Professor Sprout's ears were really roses from you because you were too bashful to give them to her yourself, that Snape and her had been snogging behind greenhouse#2, and that the relationship was doomed because she was really dating the womping willow," said George with snicker. "Then Padma would have been perfectly satisfied."  
  
*********  
  
"And since when do you know everything about romance?" demanded Harry, spinning around in his steps on a hunch and seeing that true to his suspicions, someone was following him and Ron, and that someone was Padma.  
  
Padma smiled. "I'm fluent in the language of it, thanks to Witch's Weekly." And with that, she flounced off to class.  
  
"Only thing she's fluent in is gigglish," muttered Ron to Harry as they entered Transfigurations. "She must have a different giggle for every day of the week."  
  
"And a different colored nailpolish," said Harry as he watched Padma tapping her long, laquered nails against her desktop while she flirted with Dean.  
  
"Ooh," mimicked Ron, who hated Padma with a passion-mainly because she seemed to have taken to trying to hook him up with every single last girl in the class. "My nailpolish doesn't match my bobby socks. Whatever shall I do?"  
  
Harry stifled a laugh behind one hand. "Probably go to Lockhart for advice. I'm sure he's had that same problem a multitude of times. Only, of course, minus the bobby socks. Matching curlers and nailpolish is much more tough."  
  
Opening his textbook to page 324, Ron was about to try and finish last night's homework , when to his amazement the whole essay he had been supposed to write fell directly into his lap.  
  
"What??! But Ron, you said you still had loads to do on your report," said Harry.  
  
"That's what I thought," said Ron, peering down at his paper. Or, more correctly, her paper, he realized as he looked at the heading on the top of the report.  
  
What was Hermione's stuff doing in his textbook?  
  
Meanwhile, Hermione had just arrived late for the same class as Ron and Harry. Sitting down two seats away from them, she began getting out her textbooks.  
  
Ron glared at her the whole time. Harry, however, attempted to look sympathetic-meanwhile planning ways to slip Malfoy a dungbomb, naturally.  
  
Last thing she needs is another best friend jumping to assumptions, he reasoned. I'm sure there's an explanation for everything...  
  
At least I hope there is.  
  
How could she? thought Ron furiously. And with Malfoy of all the- No, I've got to stay calm. Calm. I'm going to throw a chair at him eventual- Caaalllm. How long has she been dating him now without telling me or Harry? Months? Weeks? And to think, just this morning she said she'd tell both of us before she ever dated anyone. She doesn't realize I think of her as more than a best friend-and she probably never will if I don't get the guts to tell her. But how am I supposed to get the guts when she's out there snogging Malfoy for goodness sake?  
  
Hermione flipped open her textbook and stared at it for a moment in confusion. "Ron? Harry? Did one of you take my repor-?"  
  
She saw her essay lying on Ron's desk. "Oh." She frowned and then turned to the inscription on the inside of the textbook. Property of Ron Weasley. But that wasn't all that was written there. In the corner, several doodles were apparent, including Lavender's name surrounded by hearts?!  
  
"Ron," she said in a rather quiet voice. "I think we somehow managed to switch textbooks."  
  
But that wasn't all they had done. The minute Ron picked up Hermione's textbook to swap it back, he and it both instantly vanished, seemingly into thin air.  
  
Hermione gaped and reached over to shut Ron's textbook (which was on her desk). "Professor McGonagall? I think that Ron's..."  
  
Hermione never got to utter another word as she too vanished.  
  
*******  
  
Nearly Headless Nick sighed as he, Peeves, and Myrtle drifted behind a bookcase to watch whatever events were going to take place between Ron and Hermione. "A can understand making a portkey out of their books," he said. "But to the library? Do you have any idea exactly how loud Ron and Hermione argue?"  
  
"Only so that they can make up in the end," protested Myrtle.  
  
"Oh, they have about a fifty percent chance of doing that," Nick agreed. "But they also have a just as likely chance of beating each other senseless with stacks of books."  
  
Peeves grinned. "Freckles and Frizzy'll get trapped under a pile of books until they have beards down to their little toesies."  
  
"Girls can't have beards," pointed out Nick sensibly.  
  
"Oh yes they can," said Peeves. "Pimply wimply has one growing out of her ear."  
  
Myrtle was about to give a screeching wail in reply, but Nearly Headless Nick, realizing that they where in a library even if the other two ghosts did not, spoke. "You can't have a beard growing out of your ear. If you do, it's not a beard."  
  
"Moustache?" guessed Peeves, who had obviously been dead for a little too long.  
  
"No. It's just ear hair. And besides, Myrtle doesn't have any."  
  
"Pimply wimply doesn't have any what? Beauty? I agree," said Peeves with a nod.  
  
Nearly Headless Nick just groaned and began hitting his head repeatedly against Quidditch Through The Ages.  
  
"Ooh, you meant a boyfriend," guessed Peeves. "My bad."  
  
"I do too have a boyfriend!" snapped Myrtle, then seemed to realize what she was implying and said no more. More like multiple boyfriends if you really counted all those prefects in the bathroom..and it was a bit hard to when they didn't even know she exsisted.  
  
"Pimply wimply gets her snickers from watching boys without their knickers," Peeves began humming over and over.  
  
At least I'm for Hermione and Harry, thought Nick self importantly. Honestly, you don't see me resorting to such childish tricks as using a portkey just to get two people together, do you?  
  
Now then..would the tripping down the stairs, the attacking toothbrush of agony, or the stalking, pudding filled balloons work better on Harry and Hermione?  
  
********  
  
As the surroundings became unblurred around her, Hermione found herself in the library, much to her surprise. Finding Ron only a few inches away standing next to the same shelf wasn't nearly so surprising. Something very fishy was going on today....all these run ins she kept on having with either Ron, Harry, or Draco. If it wasn't the twins behind all these pranks, then who was it?  
  
  
  
"What the-?" began Ron.  
  
"I don't know," admitted Hermione as she sat down in one of the multifarious armchairs spread throughout the place. "This is a direct violation of rule-"  
  
"-434, I know, I know," said Ron.  
  
Hermione gave him a proud smile. "So you did read Hogwarts, A History."  
  
Ron shook his head. "Nope, sorry. You've just mentioned it so many times it started to stick. Keep this up and I'll learn the whole book backwards and forwards."  
  
"Good," said Hermione. "Maybe I should start reciting potion ingredients as well so you can pass the next test."  
  
"Point taken. So did you have fun snogging Malfoy earlier?" Ron asked her dully, sinking into a poof.  
  
At that, Hermione, who had been holding Ron's textbook open in both her hands up 'till now, slammed it shut. Fine. If it was another arguement he wanted, he'd bloody get one. Gah, it was all so pointless. Things would be so much if Ron would actually listen to her for once instead of leaping to his own conclusions.  
  
"Ooh, absolutely tons. Right up there with pulling weeds as my favorite activity," she snapped. "Whatever happened to your promising to stop overacting the minute you saw me with anyone else?"  
  
"I said I would stop getting bothered about Krum. Not Malfoy. And you made it kind of hard not to see you, what with kissing in the middle of the hall and all. Couldn't you have at least pulled him into a darkened corner or something?"  
  
Hermione groaned and rubbed her temples. She should have known that was what Ron would be upset about. "Well, if you had watched a little longer, you would have seen I slapped him afterwards. Not exactly the romantic thing to do, now is it?"  
  
"Right up there with that poetry Malfoy was reciting," said Ron, and Hermione actually thought she saw a hint of a smile in his angry face.  
  
"You know, bad as it was, I think he could actually teach Percy a thing or two."  
  
Then suddenly, he was back to looking as angry as ever. "I can't believe you like him, 'Mione."  
  
"Bloody-I do not!" Hermione was about to say that she didn't like a single male within the entire population of Hogwarts in such a way, but then she remembered just who she did...  
  
"The whole thing with Malfoy and the poetry was just someone else's idea of a stupid joke."  
  
"Right. Well, the kiss looked pretty realistic to me. Unless you two had magnets inside your lips and were forced together against your will or something, I don't exactly see how you can explain that away."  
  
"Urggh." Hermione finally lost it, along with several other people in the library, includng Madame Pomfrey, who told them to shh. "I give up! I can't explain anything to you!"  
  
"Mister Weasley and Miss Granger, I have never heard so much yelling in all my life. This is a LIBRARY. If you cannot rid yourselves of the whim to argue every five seconds. At least rid us of the need to hear you do so. Ten points from Gryffindor."  
  
This is not my day, thought Hermione grouchily. Not my day at all.  
  
"I'm leaving anyway. Here, you can have your stupid book with Lavender's initials in it back. I don't care! At least I don't get jealous over every last itty bitty thing like some people!"  
  
And with that, she promptly put the book on the arm of the chair next to Ron (Ron was relieved she didn't throw it at his head, which it looked very much like she had been going to do), and stormed out of the library, leaving him flabbergasted behind her.  
  
"Ouch," said Nearly Headless Nick, sounding anything but sorry. In fact, he sounded rather cheerful about it. Ron and Hermione argueing equaled a chance for Harry to comfort Hermione, right? Nick would just have to see to it that Ron never got to apologize...  
  
Myrtle and Peeves looked at each other. "Well," said Myrtle hopefully. "At least they didn't throw any furniture."  
  
"What do you mean at least?" demanded Peeves, sounding upset and dissapointed. "No one even got hurt."  
  
Nearly Headless Nick sighed, still slightly cross eyed from beating himself in the head with Quidditch Through The Ages. "You know, I'm beginning to think you're missing the whole point of this matchmaking thing."  
  
"Break as many limbs and explode as many things as possible?" guessed Peeves in excitement.  
  
"Ooh, I know! I know! Making sure that Hermione dates Ron and helps him study, so that he can become a prefect!" said Myrtle, thinking, naturally, of her current haunting spot.  
  
"Is all you think about the prefects taking showers?" asked Nick.  
  
"Of course not," protested Myrtle. "I think about them in swim trunks and towels, too."  
  
Peeves gave a mocking grin, getting ready to sing all of his rthyms in succession. "Pimply wimply's ick! She has an obsession with prefect's broomsticks! She gets her snickers from watching boys without their knickers. Pimply wimply likes dimply-"  
  
"Never mind," muttered Nick, going back to beating himself steadily in the head. "Just never mind."  
  
Myrtle looked at Ron and pointed her wand determinedly. "Ron can't just sit there. Not when he's so near Lavender. Just imagine what they could get up to.."  
  
"Oh, don't worry," assured Peeves. "I don't think there's enough room under the tables for what you're thinking of."  
  
Myrtle looked at him and said one word. "Eww." And that was pretty rich, considering Peeves had just managed to gross out someone who haunted the prefect's bathroom.  
  
------------  
  
  
  
"I am not jealous!" Ron's voice echoed down the hall and Hermione ceased walking to turn around and look at him. His face and his ears were both akin shades of red.  
  
Hermione noted this bemusedly and when she spoke, it was in a somewhat more calm tone then the one she had used a few minutes ago. "You know, your looks alot like a strawberry right now."  
  
Ron's eyes suddenly narrowed. Far from making him see how silly the whole argueing thing was, the comment just set him on edge even more.  
  
"That's cherry to you!" he retorted before flinging around, running straight into a wall, picking himself up, and heading back to the library, his face more red than ever.  
  
"I think he looked more like an apple, myself," stated Myrtle as they watched both Ron and Hermione go clomping off in their seperate directions.  
  
"Umm..Myrtle?" remarked Nick. "We were talking about his face."  
  
********  
  
Later that night, Hermione climbed up the stairs, exhausted but resolute. Dinner had been an absolute nightmare. Ron hadn't talked to her the whole time. In fact, he had been talking to Lavender, of all people. And no matter what Harry said on Hermione's behalf, he couldn't seem to get Ron and her to stop ignoring each other.  
  
Well, now Hermione was just going to have to take matters into her own hands. An apology was the best she could give Ron-and hey, if he wanted to turn it into another arguement, well, she would throw something and lit it out of there, because she really wasn't in the mood for another shouting match.  
  
"Hey, Hermione. Where you off to?" said two voices, perfectly synchronized.  
  
The Weasley twins had somehow managed to find Hermione yet again.  
  
*******  
  
The ghosts were at last on their way to their various haunting spots for some well earned rest (or, in Myrtle's case, some prefect watching) when they saw Hermione and the twins on the stairs. Nearly Headless Nick, who had had by far the most stressful day (you try putting up with Myrtle and Peeves for twelve hours and see where it gets you) gave a defeated sigh.  
  
"Arrgh. Someone should set spell on her so she can't so much as look at anyone besides Ron or Harry without them turning to stone."  
  
"Not stone," said Peeves. "If frizzy looks at them, they should go zooming off towards the prefect's bathroom. Pimply Wimply would like that. Pimply wimply likes dimp-"  
  
"Shut up," grumbled both Nearly Headless Nick and Myrtle as if on cue.  
  
They might as well have told Peeves to recite Romeo and Juliet from start to finish for all the good it did them. He immediately launched into another one of his rowdy songs. "Ooh..Pimply's as dim as Professor Binns, she only grins when she sees a prefect a bottle of gin."  
  
"Peeves is about to get pushed down the stairs if he says so much as one more word about so much as a hair." True to Nearly Headless Nick's words, Peeves went flying head over heels down the aforsaid stairs.  
  
"No, no, no," said Myrtle. "Can't we just make these twins dissapear or something?"  
  
Peeves, in spite of tumbling down a whole three flights of stairs, was as full of good ideas as ever. "Lock 'em in a closet! Lock 'em in a closet!" he chanted.  
  
"Whaaatt?"  
  
"That would have sounded far more normal coming from Myrtle," pointed out Nick.  
  
******  
  
Meanwhile, the twins were chatting with Hermione.  
  
"Hope you're not going after Ron," said Fred. "Because we just passed him on the stairs, and if we hadn't moved aside, he would have charged at both of us like a rhinoceros."  
  
"Which pretty much means, if you try to follow him and apologize-" started George, but Hermione cut him off.  
  
"How do you know we got into a fight?"  
  
"Other than the fact that Ron was just walking around muttering 'stupid sodding girls' and that you are clutching your bag of textbooks as if you intend to throw them at the boy's dormitory door, absolutely no clue," said Fred.  
  
"I suggest not throwing your textbooks, by the way," put in George. "The door is only on three hinges as it is from all the times you and Ron have slammed it. It originally had ten. Not to mention that the wall has more cracks now than Malfoy's old broomstick after we wacked him over the head with it."  
  
"Slam that book at the door and you'll not only have it fall down, you'll also probably make the walls crumble as well," added Fred.  
  
"Yeah, save it for later when Ron calms down and decides to go to the loo. Then you can pelt him with it square in the forehead," said George.  
  
"Besides, that bathroom provides so many oppurtunities for making up," said Fred.  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Making out, more like.  
  
"That ought to be the same thing with you and Ron," said Fred again with another shrug.  
  
"Why does everyone keep on trying to set me and Ron up? It's really starting to get on my nerves," said Hermione.  
  
"Speaking of nerves, are they all in a frazzle? Why not try the Weasley's counseling service, free of charge?" asked George, putting on a fake accent and sounding a good deal like a ring leader announcing a circus.  
  
Hermione just stared. "What?"  
  
"Come to the Gryffindor common room, sit down, and we'll talk about this further. You're obviously a danger to society if left alone," said Fred.  
  
"Or left too near the boy's dormitory door," muttered George.  
  
"Ahem. Anyway, the common room is the perfect enviroment to talk in. Much better than standing around chatting halfway up a set of stairs," said Fred.  
  
"Comfy sofas," wheedled George.  
  
"Upholstered chairs," added Fred.  
  
"Padded walls.."  
  
"Sorry, he meant to say the ceiling."  
  
"Alright," said Hermione, her hands on her hips as she studied the two twins. "Just what is your ulterior motive here?"  
  
"The fact that Filch is only two sets of stairs below us and is climbing faster by the minute," said George.  
  
Hermione leaned over the edge of the railing on the stairs to peer down and could just discern the figure that was Filch along with Mrs. Norris, both of who were making their way up the creaky stairs, just as Fred and George had said.  
  
That was all the convincing Hermione needed. Grabbing one twin by each corner of their robes, she dragged them behind her as she made a run for the Gryffindor Common room.  
  
  
  
--chapter ends here----  
  
link:http://pub39.ezboard.com//ffictionalley.frm421 


	6. In Which Ron Disappears, Preferably Over...

@All Bets Are On...@  
  
(6/7)-In which Ron Disappears-Preferably Over The Rainbow.  
  
by:GoldenSilence  
  
ezboard link:http://pub39.ezboard.com/ugoldenquill.showPublicProfile?language=EN  
  
e-mail:flipgal14@yahoo.com  
  
category:Romance/humor  
  
keywords:Hermione/Ron, Hermione/Harry, Hermione/George spoilers:PS/SS,CoS, GoF  
  
rating:PG  
  
summary: Nearly Headless Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves all have their own opinions(not to mention their own bets) of who in Gryffindor is going to get together. Harry/Hermione? Ron/Hermione?Someone else/Hermione? Now that would be telling.;)  
  
disclaimer:This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. PervertedMyrtle! is property of me..j/k  
  
--------  
  
A/N=wheee! The end has almost been reached! Only one chapter left, folks! Granted, my arms are about to seriously disconnect from my body and fall off on the keyboard, but hey, it's the work that counts.;) Sorry it took so very long to update, but I can blame it all on a) having a cold and b) having to write four stories with said cold. *honks on tissue.* Hopefully, this chapter holds up to be coherent, no?  
  
Yes, there will be three endings! I will mark where each one of them takes off from the main story too! So if this starts off against the couple you favor, keep reading and it'll get back to them at one of the endings, promise. Specifically, there is NO Ron/Hermione in this chapter. I just couldn't fit in a scene with him..well, unless I could have always had him interrupting Harry and Hermione's little chat with an axe ala Freddy Krueger...nah.:)  
  
Hey, he does get his own ending, after all.  
  
One last comment...you reviewers rock! I have gotten some of the nicest reviews of my life with that last chapter-thanks a million, they encourage me to write more (bumbumbum.:D) E-mails are welcomed, too. I love to get them.  
  
------------  
  
Filch walked right past the Gryffindor Common Room, too busy crooning a bedtime lullaby to Mrs. Norris to hear a single thing coming from within the place. The refrain of "Cradle Will Fall" echoed down the hall and naturally, into the aforsaid common room. Hermione, George, and Fred had not shut the door behind them hard enough, they had been in such a hurry to get out of Filch's and Mrs. Norris's line of eyesight. Therefor, the door was standing wide open, allowing the song's refrain to be heard.  
  
Fred got up to shut the door, shutting out the noise while he, George, and in what seemed to be a rare occasion, Hermione all snickered over what they had just heard.  
  
"Wonder if he dresses Mrs. Norris in doll clothes and plays tea party, too?" questioned Fred.  
  
"Nah. Probably too busy marrying him off to malibu barbie," said George.  
  
"Now there's an ideal union. Where would she live? Inside his stomach?"  
  
Hermione knew a good deal about the nature of cats and sizable plastic things. Empty candy bags from Honeydukes and Crookshanks certainly didn't mix. (Neither did Lavender's Wimpy Wiild Warlocks cd and Crookshanks, but then that hadn't exactly been an "accident.")  
  
"I was thinking more along the lines of Bermuda. A few swims in the water would do that cat good," said Fred.  
  
"It could drown!"  
  
"That's the point," said George. "Fred did say it would do Mrs. Norris good, didn't he?"  
  
"Oh, lay off the poor cat," snapped Hermione, so intent on arguing with them that she half forgot the reason she was in the common room-after curfew, no less- with the Weasley twins in the first place. "What did she ever do to you?"  
  
"That's a bad question to ask-" said Fred.  
  
"-Unless you want to be here until five in the morning," added George.  
  
"Sure that wouldn't interfere with your usual schedule?"  
  
"No. We don't have a schedule," George stated at the same time as Fred said "yes."  
  
"So you just basically commit acts of mayhem on a random basis?" asked Hermione.  
  
"Basically," answered back both twins, smiling and making Hermione have a strange feeling she was going to be sitting in that common room for awhile before she found out just what they wanted to talk to her about. ( Not that they didn't talk to everyone. They even practiced their jokes on the rusty sets of armor from time to time. ) They had said that they wanted to ask about Ron. Hah! She very much doubted that. Since when did Fred (or George, for that matter) hand out advice on ornery best friends? Never. But then the twins were unpredictability itself.  
  
All she knew was that if it had anything to do with using Crookshanks to carry dungbombs or any other explosives to the faculty bathroom, her answer was going to be a most emphatic "no."  
  
************  
  
Just her luck. The Gryffindor Common Room door would have to spelled so that ghosts couldn't glide through it. On top of that, it was locked to boot. Myrtle stared at the wooden door in immense frusteration, tapping it with her wand.  
  
If only she could remember that spell for picking locks. "Amoramantis," said Myrtle out loud, giving her wand an experimental wave, but to her dismay, nothing happened. Come on, she told herself desperately. It was only fifty years ago!  
  
"Ahola," she tried again. Still no effect upon the rusty door knob. Myrtle refused to give up, trying out several more combinations of letters and phrases, in the hope that one of them was correct.  
  
"Ahola morit? Ahola boris? Aloha?"  
  
"What are you trying to do, transport us to Hawaii?" asked Nick irritably, rolling his eyes, an expression that along with an fed up look was beginning to become uniquely his own, thanks to being in the company of Myrtle and Peeves for far too long. "Really, the spell for unlocking doors is quite easy. I can't believe you don't remember it."  
  
Myrtle sniffled, still waving her wand around aimlessly (and, along with Nick and Peeves, not realizing that it was just such aimless wand waving that would get all three ghosts into trouble.) "Well, if you're so smart, what's the spell, then?"  
  
Nick's confident and superior look vanished almost instantly. "Umm..ermm..I don't remember."  
  
Myrtle and Peeves snickered (or snorted, seeing as both ghosts were covering their mouths with their hands so as not to make too much noise.)  
  
Myrtle stopped snorting and turned to Peeves, who was still going on stifling his laughter. He tended to be the sort who would go on laughing for hours- even after he forgot what he'd been laughing about-just to annoy people.  
  
"What about you?"  
  
Peeves' nose wrinkled in disgust. "I don't remember anything from school-"  
  
"-Except how to blow rasberries," pointed out Nick.  
  
"It's a very useful skill," said Peeves, sounding hurt. "And at least I didn't forget my teachers' names."  
  
"Only so you could know which classes to skip. I remember that," said Myrtle haughtily. She and Peeves had been at Hogwarts during the same time. Alive, that was. Not that they had changed a smidgen since their school days.  
  
Peeves gave a chesire cat-like grin. "We had classes?"  
  
Nick threw his hands up in the air. "I give up!" (He had said these words on a regular basis since this morning, mind you.) "Let's just go torture the house elves and call it a day, shall we?"  
  
"No, wait a minute." Myrtle appeared to be deep in thought. Though, the fact that she was still waving her wand around without purpose ruined the whole contemplating pose a bit. "I remember now. Learned the unlocking spell in Professor Binns class, fifth year."  
  
Nick sighed hopelessly. "In Professor Binn's class? No wonder none of us can remember it."  
  
"Ooh! I remember him!" said Peeves. "That was my favorite class!"  
  
"Exactly," said both of the other ghosts.  
  
"Sort of like naptime for the older set," said Myrtle reflectively as she tried out muttering yet another slew of phrases. When those too didn't work, she hit herself in the head with her wand, which led to the peculiar image of it sticking through her head, seeing as she was transparent.  
  
"So if neither of you remembers the spell, how are we supposed to go in and get rid of the twins?" asked Nick.  
  
"I have an idea," said Mytle, who seemed to be on some sort of ingenious streak. Or that was what Nearly Headless Nick thought until he saw her so called "idea."  
  
Backing up about five feet, Myrtle ran straight for the door to the common room. Then , at the last second, doing a funny sort of dive to the floor, she attempted to use the dive to slide through the crack underneath the door.  
  
Attempting was the most accurate word to use to describe what happened next, as well. Myrtle looked as if she was actually going to squeeze her way through the door (all those years of living in the toilet pipes had payed off.) Her head and stomach had dissapeared from view, presumably, now on the other side of the common room door. However, her slithering through the space between the door and the floor came to an abrupt halt the minute she tried to wedge her bottom half through.  
  
Mytle, was, in short, undeniably and inexcusibly...  
  
stuck.  
  
Peeves, ever the gallant gentleman (hey, after all, he did wear a bow tie- even if it did have yellow polka dots) rushed over right away to try and help Myrtle out of her predicament.But he accomplished nothing except to make the whole thing worse than it already was.  
  
Taking out a honey jar from who knew where (actually, from who didn't want to know where) Peeves poured the contents of it all over the lower half of Myrtle that was still on the ghost's side of the door.  
  
"It'll help her get out easier," he explained to the much horrified Nick.  
  
"That's grease that does that, not honey, you dimwit!"  
  
Peeves grinned wickedly. "Same thing. Besides, pimply wimply's pimples give her all the grease she needs."  
  
Nearly Headless Nick, feeling defensive of Myrtle for some reason, walked over and did what he thought Myrtle would have done if her arms could have reached Peeves. Well, what she would have done besides strangle the polegerist.  
  
Namely, Nick took the jar of honey and stuck it over Peeves' head (amazingly, it didn't go right through him.) "Don't worry Myrtle," he said reassuringly. "Just stay quiet so they don't notice you and we'll get you out."  
  
"Don't notice me?" whispered Myrtle's voice from somewhere on the other side of the door. She didn't seem to even be so much as shedding a tear, though she was definitely on the verge of hysteria. "I look like a mutated corpse! My legs and bloomers are on the other bloody side of the door!"  
  
Nick, realizing her panic, (and resisting the urge to chuckle, unlike Peeves, who was back to his amused chuckling) took action in the form of pounding the door with his fists in hoping that it would open. Of course, with all his strength, that was the equivalent of banging against a brick wall with a fingernail. A clipped fingernail.  
  
*************  
  
Not so much as a peep of the pandemonium and noise going on outside reached the twins and Hermione's ears. The Gryffindor common room doors were spelled to muffle all sound for just such a result. This was for the benefit of both those inside the place, and occasionally, when there was nowhere else for the lurkers-Astronomy Tower was crowded or Filch was on a particularly meticulous watch for students violating curfew-those outside.  
  
Indeed, Hermione and the twins were talking as if nothing had happened, their backs turned towards the door and Moaning Myrtle.  
  
"Okay," said Hermione, jumping to conclusions as she seated herself on a stool beside the twins (who were next to each other on the frayed couch.) "What did you bring me here to talk to me about? And if it's that you intend to blow up the school building, count me out."  
  
"Really?" asled Fred. "Your loss, then."  
  
George shook his head. "You should have told our secretaries first. This completely messes up our plans."  
  
Both saw the serious look on her face. "We're joking."  
  
"I knew that. So get to the point. Do you even remember why you dragged me in here to begin with?"  
  
"What, besides Filch being about ten feet away from us all?" asked Fred.  
  
"Besides that."  
  
"You tell us, Miss Granger," said George in mock graveness, his chin propped up in both hands and staring at her with concern that caught Hermione by surprise. Until she saw Fred grab a pair of someone or other's glasses left on the coffee table and put them low on his nose, getting out a notepad and pretending to be ready to scribble notes on it.  
  
Snap out of it. They're just both pretending to be shrinks, Hermione told herself crossly. Cross at George or herself? Of that she wasn't sure.  
  
"Miss Granger? So you are planning on blowing up the school building. I knew it!"  
  
"You appeared to be troubled about something earlier," said Fred, giving her his most studious look. "What seems to be the problem?"  
  
If only someone would be that concerned about her and be serious about it. Lavender, when she heard Hermione confess as much, always said that Hermione was being influenced from reading one too many romance novels. But on the contrary, Hermione never read any romance novels-she HATED them. All of her idealized rations about her dream guy (Lavender's choice of words, not hers) were all her own. Basically, she just wantd someone, anyone, to need her as a friend as much as she needed them. (With Ron and Harry, it sometimes seemed she was needed for one reason and one reason only. Her brains, and thought that was nice sometimes, it was also annoying at times, as well.)  
  
Hermione privately had decided that after today's events, not confusing her would be at the top of her list. Because the normally staid Hermione was confused. She wasn't going to tell the twins that, though. No way. They weren't exactly on her list of people to trust-but still, George seemed to be less likely to tell someone than Fred ( perhaps because the former was the more thoughtful and trustworthy of the two, not going to tell gossip just for the sake of a joke- though he'd do alot of other things for a one.)  
  
"Besides being up past curfew, nothing," said Hermione in response to Fred's earlier question, regretting how much like a teacher she sounded. Being stereotyped as the smart one all the time definitely had its drawbacks-mainly, that you started to become such even more than you were to begin with.  
  
George raised his eyebrows as he recalled the way his younger brother had stamped up the stairs, his face matching his paisley pajamas. "Nothing? Ron seems to be thinking along a different line."  
  
Hermione wasn't surprised to hear that. To be honest, the problem was more the exact opposite of "nothing." In Ron's eyes, anyway. Hermione had far more on the mind than just Ron-though he was, admittedly, part of it all.  
  
" I know he is," she said with a sigh, deciding to tell the twins after all. This wasn't a bad move considering that true to Hermione's thoughts, George wouldn't tell-and he'd stop Fred from telling. "He thinks anyone who spends fifteen minutes alone with me isn't to be trusted again-and I suppose that's why he's hardly saying a word to Harry. It's stupid. Nothing happened! Harry told him as much and so did I."  
  
"You mean yelled at him," stated Fred with a sincere nod that had Hermione trying hard not to laugh. George and him sitting there so seriously was, well, pretty funny. (They acted like a set of clowns escaped from the circus turned monks.)  
  
"Okay, okay, yelled at him," she admitted. "But it was only to get the point across! He wouldn't listen when I just talked. Grr.. his views must be encased within a thick layer of cement."  
  
"That's one explanation for why his head is so hard," agreed George.  
  
"And why the time you cracked your beater's club over his head on accident after a quidditch game, Ronniepoo's noggin didn't so much as get a dent," said Fred.  
  
"Oh right. And I suppose you're always running into walls in the middle of the night when you sleep walk hasn't done anything to YOUR head? Should be squashed flat as a pancake now, if I'm one to judge."  
  
"Well, he does look remarkably like Dobby from the side," observed Hermione, actually enjoying talking to twins. They could be infuriating, sure, but they kind of reminded her of some strange clash of both Ron's and Harry's personalities (with a mix of Peeves thrown in for good measure.)  
  
"True. Already has the socks look down," said George, noticing his brother's mismatched socks (one grey and one white.) He spoke to Fred. "All you need now is a tea cozy."  
  
"And a thick pair of yellow galoshes," added Hermione with a laugh, the image of Dobby running around trying to keep from catching a cold by holding a leaf over his head forever engrained in her memory.  
  
He had made her laugh. George felt immensly proud of that, as if it was some sort of wonderful accomplishment. Hermione was usually way too serious for her own good, in his opinion. Lightening up was just what she needed.  
  
"And a long flannel nightdress," added George, laughing too at the indignant look on his twin's face. Usually, his twin and him were the ones with the biting sarcastic comments-not him and someone else. (Another reason to ask Hermione out-or to become better friends with her. They really weren't all that different in some matters.)  
  
"You really must be in S-P-E-W overtime, because you certainly know alot about Dobby's nightwear. A little TOO much," said Fred to George, realizing at last exactly what George had been trying to keep from him. Nice try, but how long could you keep something from your twin? A day was stretching it.  
  
"You sure that's not just part of his usual daily attire?" asked George.  
  
"That's something I dearly hope never to find out." Fred gave a shudder.  
  
"If it weren't for insensitive people like you, he'd probably be going around naked."  
  
"Now there's an unappealing thought," retorted George.  
  
Hermione suddenly picked up an embroidered pillow on the couch (which was dangerously near Fred's head.) "Ooh..I'm soo mad."  
  
George wasn't sure if she was talking about Ron or in response to his comment (he hoped it was the former.) "Whoa, watch out. In angry Hermione, that's code speak for she's one step from punching us in the eyes."  
  
"Or reciting part of Hogwarts, A History," said Fred.  
  
"Close. Very close," said Hermione, grinding her teeth in frusteration. "I was going to go find Ron and bash his head into both of yours."  
  
"Don't do that," protested George. "You'd be losing the only sensitive souls that will listen."  
  
"So what's your advice, oh sensitive shrinks?"  
  
Fred, getting a sudden idea (about as keen as Myrtle's early one) gave an evil smile. "Make that shrink. You'll just have to ask George's opinion on the matter. I've got places to go. You two kiddies play nice now."  
  
That git! thought George angrily. How'd he find out? For George knew exactly why Fred was leaving-and it was for one reason only. One reason sitting across from him. Ugh. Fred made a horrible matchmaker. George resolved to put something unpleasant in in his brother's bed soon. Very soon. Something along the lines, of oh say, all of his dirty laundry. No, scratch that. All of his dirty underwear.  
  
Ignoring his brother's glares and Hermione's questioning glance, Fred got off the couch, opened the door, and-- stopped. He took one look at Moaning Myrtle lying there and walked right on past, saying as he went by, "mistook the common room for the boy's dormitories, eh?"  
  
************  
  
"So then, tell me. What's the solution?" asked Hermione at length.  
  
"Oh, I'll tell..if you come and get a butterbeer at Hogsmeade sometime with me."  
  
Hermione didn't look the least bit shocked. George was just teasing, as always. His light hearted tone stated that clear enough. Thinking it was just a joke, she joked right back.  
  
"You're that desperate?"  
  
"Yes," said George. "And no." He looked directly at her, his hands till resting on his chin in the "shrink" pose. He just hoped that what he was saying made sense-normally, being alone in the same room with Hermione was comfortable-but when he was anticipating something not so pleasant, it was nerve wracking. And that was saying something, because George didn't get nervous easily, if at all.  
  
What he planned on asking her took guts. Especially considering...  
  
But disregarding the thoughts he had had on the matter at breakfast that morning, George decided to not wait until after either Ron or Harry had said they liked Hermione for him to say as much. Hey, she either liked him or she didn't. That was all there was to it.  
  
George launched right into his impromptu speech, wondering all the while as he spoke "what am I saying?"  
  
"I think you ought to know that I like you alot. I'd even read all that poetry stuff Malfoy said-well, maybe not the swearing every other sentence and the threatening bodily harm part, but all the rest."  
  
Hermione blinked. Twice. Not a good sign, thought George. She was busy thinking up a proper reaction. One that preferably didn't involve falling over sideways from pure shock. The first words out of her mouth were a "ah." Her thoughts were even less coherent.  
  
He couldn't possibly-he just-he couldn't. Could he? Did he? But then how did she feel? About? No. Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. They didn't know each other well enough.  
  
"What are you? From the twelfth century?" muttered a voice in the back of her head. "Wish he had been introduced to you when you were toddlers so you could find out if his diapers were fashionable or not? Hah!"  
  
"Oh be quiet," she told it, her temper rapidly shortening. Going schizophrenic in the middle of trying to think was NOT a good thing. That was it. George was joking. Of course he was! Wasn't that just what he always did?  
  
Hermione gave a relieved smile in George's direction. "You're joking, right?"  
  
"Would it make it easier if I said it was?" Something in the way George said this was all wrong. Ohoh. And then some. He didn't sound like he was joking anymore.  
  
"Yes," said Hermione, not even thinking before she said it-not that she could think at the moment. Lack of sleep and the crazy antics of that day had turned her to kaput.  
  
"Then it is." Hermione was surprised by George's tone. He didn't sound upset, either. Just matter of a fact. But weren't you supposed to argue or throw things at times like these?  
  
Nah. That was just Ron, thought Hermione fondly. She shook her head, confused. She hated fighting with Ron. It was so annoying, but yet...  
  
George stood up and walked off towards the door, stopping just as Fred had when he saw Moaning Myrtle stuck there. But just like Fred, he didn't help. Unknown to Hermione, he was upset. Very. He was also excellent at hiding it. Yeah, almost as good as Ron is at hiding his feelings for Hermione. Nice going.  
  
George swung open the door and left, forgetting to close it behind him. It was this that gave Moaning Myrtle hope.  
  
Free! I'm finally free! Wooh-  
  
Her joyous thoughts ceased as George turned back around and slammed the door. Hard. So much for being nonchalant.  
  
Hermione winced at the loud scraping noise of the door shutting. "Oh, that really helped. Thanks alot! You were supposed to clarify things, not make them worse!" Hermione argued nonsensically with the embroidered pillow she was holding (though the pillow certainly was not what she was talking about.)  
  
Stupid boys. First year, I could have gone around in my pajamas all day long and all any of them would have had to say was that they needed help on their homework or that I had forgotten to wear slippers. Now-ack, I don't even want to think about now.  
  
"I hate hormones!" she yelled at the door before she too slammed out, failing to notice Myrtle (and stepping on her head while she was at it.)  
  
"What am I?" called a fed up Myrtle after her, having now been stepped on by no less than three people. "A bearskin rug?"  
  
But there was no answer, Hermione was already turning off on the staircase to the girl's dormitories, having passed the other two ghosts without noticing them, either.  
  
Moaning Myrtle, still stuck despite Nick's best efforts, began churning her fingers on the cobblestone floor impatiently.  
  
One hundred piles of towels by the pool, one hundred piles of towels. Take on down, pass it around, only ninety nine soaked prefects by the pool...  
  
**************  
  
Nick was still trying to get Myrtle unstuck, albeit half heartedly. Peeves was most certainly not helping, now rolling around on the floor laughing (he sounded twice as scary as usual with a honey pot still stuck on his head.)  
  
But even Peeves ceased his guffaws when he saw the person that was standing, hands on hips, scowling at all three of them (or two and a half of them, depending on your view of Myrtle.)  
  
Professor McGonagall was apparently quite fond of taking midnight strolls.  
  
Nick and Peeves stared at her in horror.  
  
McGonagall used the same tone on them that she would have used on a group of incorrigible students. "And what exactly do you think you are you up to?"  
  
"Absolutely nothing," answered Peeves innocently, putting a halo around his head (or rather, around the honey jar stuck on top of his head.)  
  
He might as well have had the halo held up by a set of horns for all the good it did him. "Stop trying to get me out! They've all left to go somewhere," Myrtle called through the door, not knowing Professor McGonagall was standing there. She was rewarded with a hefty kick in the shins from Peeves.  
  
"Who's all left to go where, Myrtle?"  
  
As soon as Myrtle heard that voice, she shut it fast. "Oh, no one," she lied.  
  
"So no one has left to go somewhere? Most interesting."  
  
All three ghosts gulped.  
  
"And what's your excuse for being up?" Professor McGonagall continued, looking just as stern as ever-in spite of the fact that she was wearing a plaid bathrobe and a set of fluffy bunny slippers.  
  
"Umm..we're someones going nowhere?" Nick ventured and was privy to yet another kick in the shins from Peeves (Peeves didn't seem to realize that since both ghosts were transparent, the kick had absolutely no effect.)  
  
"I suppose the explains your hooligans regarding a certain Miss Granger as well? We will debate that in my office. Now."  
  
"But-but that's like detention!" exclaimed Peeves, who actually sounded in awe. Apparently, detention was something he had been trying to achieve for ages. Hmm..maybe he should make bets more often.  
  
Nick was abashed at McGonagall's words. "I've been dead for over three hundred years! Isn't that a little old for detention?"  
  
"You are never to old to learn from your mistakes," said McGonagall firmly as she pointed her own wand at the common room door and opened it to behold a sticky and thoroughly disgruntled Myrtle.  
  
"This is criminal injustice, I tell you. Criminal!" howled Nick as Professor McGonagall suddenly turned and dragged both him down the hall by his ears and Peeves down the hall by the handle on the side of the honey pot on his head (she wouldn't do as much to Myrtle, seeing as she wasn't keen on gettng any more honey all over her bathrobe, but Myrtle followed, nonetheless.)  
  
"Weren't you a criminal in your past life, anyway?" questioned Myrtle of Nick.  
  
Nick somehow managed to look pompous even as he was getting dragged down the length of the hall by someone shorter than him. "Not criminal. Thief," he corrected her.  
  
Peeves, in spite of getting pulled by the jar on his head, gave a giggle (but then, Peeves was always giggling, particularly at the most inopportune times.) "Another words, you only got hung by your thumbs instead of your neck."  
  
Nick turned a deep shade of scarlet. "That's not true! Errm..not mostly, anyway."  
  
"Look at it this way," said Myrtle as she followed behind Professor McGonagall's hapless victims, for once being the comforter and the comforted. "We're making history! The first ghosts to ever get detention."  
  
"Already made history once," said Nick gloomily.  
  
"How?"  
  
"Involved an axe and my-"  
  
"-Neck," finished Peeves, thought it came out more like necK due to the fact that the honey jar he was wearing kept bumping the back of his head most unpleasantly as McGonagall pulled him along.  
  
"Why does everyone always assume that? Honestly, how can one make history when they're dying? It was my foot," said Nick, much aggrieved.  
  
"Oh. Sorry."  
  
"You could tell that to the axeman if you ever see him. I hear he haunts Durmstang these days. Harumph, not good enough to get a job at Hogwarts, of course, what with his bloody record and all."  
  
"He was an executioner," Myrtle pointed out. Professor McGonagall just rolled her eyes. The ghosts certainly weren't acting very pentulant about all the crazy things they had done that day.  
  
"Still," said Nick stubbornly. "He could have strangled people or something instead, couldn't he? Nice, nonbloody form of death. But noo, he had to use a stupid blunt axe..."  
  
Professor McGonagall wasn't sure who the detention was going to be more punishment for, her or the ghosts.  
  
**************  
  
Just as McGonagall had been turning into the hall Hermione had been in, Hermione had taken a side corridor that led to a set of stairs, narrowly missing the professor.  
  
However, there was more than one person up at that time of night. Hermione spotted a figure (and worse, a male one at that) coming around the corner of the stairs towards her, going down just as she was going up.  
  
I told you you should have just stayed in bed this morning, but did you listen? Oooh, Of course not," a voice nagged Hermione.  
  
You're also the one that told me Ron would never get jealous of Krum, she shot back.  
  
"'Mione?" said Harry, recognizing her.  
  
Inwardly, Hermione gave a groan. This just was not her day. At all. It wasn't that she minded meeting up with Harry, but getting so much as within a foot of him, Ron, Draco, or George led to disasterous (in her mind's eye, anyway) events. If she so much as ran into one more wall, fell in one more puddle, saw one more vision of Santa Clause's disembodied head...  
  
"What are you doing up?" asked Harry before she could ask the same of him.  
  
Hermione rubbed her temples. Her head hurt badly. It was a headache trying to keep up with both Ron and George's flying off the handle-not to mention that both were causing another headache on top of that one for a different reason, entirely. Thank goodness Harry wasn't the sort to blow up at her. At least there was one person that she could still figure out.  
  
"Oh, you know, the usual. Arguing with George in the middle of the night about arguing with Ron arguing with me."  
  
"You aren't making any sense," pointed out Harry with a smile.  
  
" I think my senses are having an off day," said Hermione, not caring how stupid she sounded.  
  
"I think you're just having an off day, period."  
  
"That too," agreed Hermione. "I think after this morning's events, I'll take up eating breakfast Japanese style on a cushion."  
  
"Cushions can be enchanted, too."  
  
"I learned that about the time Ron flew a pillow into my forehead."  
  
"At least you weren't the one that got feathers stuck up your nose when he whammed it into your face," said Harry.  
  
"So what are you doing up?" asked Hermione at last.  
  
"Oh that." Harry gave a very uncharacteristic mischevious kind of smile-one that made Hermione wish she possessed a blindfold to wear whenever he got near. That would have helped things out considerably. "I was going down to raid the kitchens for milk and cookies. Care to join?"  
  
"Sure. I could use a nice, normal conversation. One that doesn't involve people throwing things, yelling, or slamming doors."  
  
"I don't think it's possible to have a nice, normal conversation when you're about to fall asleep standing," said Harry, observing as Hermione swayed in place, trying to fight off sleep.  
  
"Then I can have a nice, normal conversation falling asleep sitting," responded Hermione. And that decided it. She turned around on the stairs and began going down them again with Harry.  
  
"Just don't talk about Ron or George, please," warned Hermione as she and Harry walked off towards the kitchens together.  
  
"How's Krum doing?"  
  
"Not him either. Just don't talk." Hermione didn't exactly realize how brusque that sounded until it came out of her mouth and by then, it was too late. That wasn't exactly how she had meant to say it...  
  
Harry didn't take offense, though. "So you plan on having a nice, normal conversation between yourself and the cookies, then? Wouldn't that be a bit hard? I reccomend talking to the milk instead."  
  
Hermione tried to explain. "Sorry Harry. Didn't mean it like that-it's just.."  
  
"It's okay," Harry assured her hurriedly. "So let's see, no mention of Ron, Krum, or George. Anyone else?"  
  
"Yes." Hermione yawned. "A word of advice, stick to cookies," she teased.  
  
"I'll do that. But I'm warning you, they aren't very responsive."  
  
"Diffiicult to be when you're eating them, isn't it?"  
  
***********  
  
Hermione and Harry sat in front of the cheerfully crackling fire in the kitchen's hearth, drinking hot chocolate. (They had decided against milk. The castle didn't have central heating and being in the middle of winter, well, suffice to say, the milk left out on the counter had all been frozen over.) Taking a precautious sip of the steaming liquid, Hermione asked Harry a question.  
  
"So, what woke you up in the middle of the night in the first place?"  
  
She knew very well how mother hen-ish that sounded, but she had always been that way about Harry and Ron.  
  
Harry shrugged. "I had a nightmare."  
  
At this, Hermione turned sympathetic. Harry often had nightmares of Voldemort-and worse. He'd told her as much before often enough, but never Ron. Perhaps because Ron, good of a friend as he was, would have overreacted, and that was not what Harry needed. Hermione was more calm, though inwardly she worried as much as Ron would have in her place, though she didn't show it.  
  
"The same one?"  
  
"No. Quite different."  
  
Very different, thought Harry. And perhaps not entirely a nightmare. But still, dreaming of Hermione and Ron getting married, with Ron in the wedding veil and Hermione trying to put Dobby on Ron's hand as a wedding ring, was not exactly what Harry called pleasant. I will never fall asleep chewing Drooble's Best Chewing gum again for as long as I live.  
  
"Want to talk about it?"  
  
"Not really."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Harry could tell Hermione was upset about that, but he couldn't help it. This was one dream/ nightmare that he was not telling.  
  
"Well, I'm sure it can't be as scary as waking up next to Trevor's face every morning like Neville does," said Hermione soothingly.  
  
"Oh, I don't know about that. Have you ever seen Seamus's face at one in the morning when he's still in his chicken pajamas? Duck and Run comes to mind."  
  
The image of a disgruntled Harry trying to hide under his covers came to Hermione's mind and she privately thought it a rather cute one (but, of course, said nothing of this matter to Harry.)  
  
"At least you aren't in a living one," muttered Hermione into her hot chocolate rather than directly to Harry, who frowned.  
  
"Listen, I know Ron has a bit of a temper and you guys haven't exactly been seeing eye to eye lately, but--"  
  
"He's part of it," said Hermione. "But not all."  
  
"Let me guess. Krum, George, and all the rest are?"  
  
"Yeah. Them and all the other wierd stuff that happened today. Slipping in puddles, getting zoomed across the room, midnight trysts; it all wears a tad heavily on a teenager's schedule."  
  
"You forgot to add trying to study for the O.W.L's, being chased by two girls who want your autograph on their foreheads, being stampeded by a bunch of really burly seventh years, and having two best friends who refuse to talk to each other," added Harry.  
  
"I'll talk to him--when he apologizes."  
  
Harry stirred the contents of his hot chocolate around, the marshmellows in it dissolving. "He said the exact same thing when he skulked into the dormitories not that long ago. Don't expect me to be your official interpeter at breakfast. I am not telling Ron to please pass the butter or you to hurry up and finish your oatmeal."  
  
"I don't think butter and oatmeal are on the menu for breakfast tomorrow. It's french toast and pumkin juice."  
  
"You know what I mean."  
  
"Fine. First thing tomorrow, I'll apologize."  
  
"So I can expect Ron to forgive you sometime around lunch, then? He was really upset, Hermione."  
  
"I know that," said Hermione groggily. "Just tell me, is the Gryffindor boy's dormitory door still in place?"  
  
"Yeah. He didn't slam it this time."  
  
Hermione gave a half smile. "Good, maybe that means--"  
  
She was cut off by Harry. "Though, he did throw the figurine of Krum against the wall again. And he did appear to be trying to smother himself underneath his blankets, afterwards. He should have just saved himself the trouble, marched over to the Slytherin dormitories, handed Draco his blanket, and then told Draco that he was a no good git that wore hair curlers to bed, but Ron wasn't exactly in a mood to listen to me."  
  
"Ouch."  
  
"He really likes you, 'Mione. You know that, right?"  
  
"How did we get to talking about Ron?" demanded Hermione, not very comfortable on the topic. "I thought he was going to be left out of this."  
  
"Can't be, can he?" said Harry, going on about something else entirely, though Hermione didn't realize it. "After all, we're all best friends. And if you two don't make up somehow or other I will seriously consider--"  
  
"We will. I already said we would. Why are you so worried about it?"  
  
Harry munched on a chocolate chip cookie off of the platter the house elves had brought 'round. "No reason." I make a terrible liar. "And I mean not just make up from the latest fight. Make up from whatever has been causing you two to fight lately."  
  
"That leads to the unmentionable one."  
  
"Aha, Krum--and Lavender?"  
  
How did Harry know? It was a bit uncanny.  
  
"Ugh. She's unmentionable now, too."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Harry abruptly switched the topic-to what Hermione would rather have not talked about at all. "Hermione, I'm serious. You have to to choose between either George or Ron."  
  
And me, added Harry silently. He didn't want to break up the friendship between the three; him, her, and Ron, not unless Ron had had a chance to ask her first. He deserved to get something. Harry always got most everything; the fame, the glory, etc (quoted by Rita Skeeter's down to the last syllable) and as many times as Harry tried to tell Ron he hated all of that, it was true, it still wasn't fair...and that was just they way things were.  
  
Not that Hermione should have been something to "get". She wasn't some trophy, Harry reprimanded himself, disgusted at his earlier line of thought. Just letting Ron have her because he wanted to play fair and so Ron would finally stop thinking he was just the sidekick. Basically, because he didn't want Ron to resent him any more than he possibly already did. How stupid. Hermione couldn't solve Harry's problems for him.  
  
Hermione was just Hermione. And you're just Harry and Ron's just Ron, but that doesn't change things, does it?  
  
No. Makes them more complicated.  
  
"What? But there isn't--" started Hermione.  
  
"But both want there to be."  
  
"Oh, for goodness sakes," said Hermione, having had way beyond her fill of melodrama. "And what if I don't? The word'll explode?"  
  
"No. But Ron probably will," said Harry, thinking back to his friend's livid face as he entered the dormitories earlier.  
  
"And what if I don't want to date anyone, then? What if I think the whole thing is just stupid and I would much rather not?"  
  
"Then don't choose anyone," Harry responded. He smirked as he finished off the last of the cookies. "Don't want you going out with Dobby just because you feel you have to."  
  
"I could have gotten better advice from a textbook."  
  
"You talk to textbooks?" questioned Harry, still wearing the same maddening smirk.  
  
Hermione threw her hands up in the air, copying Nearly Headless Nick's style. "Oh never mind."  
  
Harry drained the last of his hot chocolate and waited while the sleepy house elf (whose tea cozy had fallen around the back of her head to form a twisted kind of bonnet) cleared it from the small table. "Well, I'm off to bed. Quidditch game in the morning."  
  
Hermione stood up as well, giving an enormous yawn as she put her cup in the sink (she refused to let the house elves do the work.) "Good luck tomorrow," she told Harry as he left.  
  
"Why are you wishing me good luck? You'll be there."  
  
"Oh yeah."  
  
Suddenly feeling very awkward, Hermione busied herself rinsing out her mug of hot chocolate, stopping to grab a sugar cookie to munch on before heading up the stairs to bed, herself.  
  
Oh, she could figure out Harry, alright (or she thought she could.) The only problem now was figuring out herself.  
  
Boys. They made good shrinks..  
  
but they were also the reason you needed to see them.  
  
  
  
***********  
  
BUMBUMBUM..Will the ghosts escape McGonagall's wrath and continue their ceaseless joke playing?...(alright. I can't do the cliffy thing, I admit it, but hey, watch out for the next part anyway!)  
  
---  
  
A/N#2=Ron/Hermione fans, I will make it up to you, I promise. Your ending will come first of all the endings.;) 


	7. Perfection In The Eye Of The Beholder

@All Bets Are On@  
  
(7/7)-Perfection In The Eye of The Beholder  
  
by:GoldenSilence  
  
ezboard link:http://pub39.ezboard.com/ugoldenquill.showPublicProfile?language=EN  
  
e-mail:flipgal14@yahoo.com  
  
category:Romance/humor  
  
keywords:Hermione/Ron, Hermione/Harry, Hermione/George spoilers:PS/SS,CoS, GoF  
  
rating:PG  
  
summary: Nearly Headless Nick, Myrtle, and Peeves all have their own opinions(not to mention their own bets) of who in Gryffindor is going to get together. Harry/Hermione? Ron/Hermione?Someone else/Hermione? Now that would be telling.;)  
  
disclaimer:This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. PervertedMyrtle! is property of me..j/k Also, one scene in this is somewhat like something from a Muppet's Christmas Carol. Sorry guys, that is my favorite movie of all time.;)  
  
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A/N=I really just didn't have the inspiration to finish this for quite some time, so I just want to thank everyone that encouraged me to finish this. Starlight, and miuccia (if I spelled your name wrong, you have full permission to rant at me:)) in pparticular, and all you other people that took the time to review and tell me what you think as well. If it weren't for you guys, this never would have gotten finished. So I hope in spite of the long time it's been since my last update, you get a chance to read the ending, or should I say, endings.;)  
  
important (you may be confused if you don't read): All three are here in this chapter. Read the beginning of this chapter no matter what couple you favor (that's important!), and after a certain point in this chapter, the different endings will branch off, with Harry/Hermione first, then Ron/Hermione, then my personal fav of all favs, George/Hermione (and no, the couplings are definitely NOT in my order of preference.) Each ending is marked clearly. I suggest you read all three as the dialogue, situations, and stuff is NOT THE SAME.  
  
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Even the frigid morning air couldn't keep the students from turnining out in droves to see the quidditch match. Why, it could have been pouring rain in torrents, and they still would have showed up to cheer on their respective teams. They always did, rain or shine, and today was no exception. Coats turned up, mittens and hats pulled on, and with red noses from the cold, the whole of Hogwarts' student body (and a good deal of the professors as well) were present.  
  
Lee was yacking into his microphone, taking the oppurtunity of McGonagall not being present (she was just finishing up her reprimanding of the ghosts that had started last night) to mutter several biased, to say the least, things concerning Gryffindor. Not that he didn't do so at every match anyway but with the teacher gone, he could mutter several more "comments" about Slytherin in addition. Comments like, "What's Marcus Flint riding? A mop?" and "There goes Draco Malfoy! An excellent seeker, indeed..when compared with a festering tree stump."  
  
Of course, Lee was whispering all this-whispering, but loud enough so that only the Gryffindors up in the stands; Neville, Ginny, Hermione, Lavender, Parvati, Seamus, and the lot, could hear him. Then with a sharp piercing shriek from Madame Hooch's whistle (sounded comparable to Hermione's yelling when she got really mad, thought Ron, his mind still on the fight they had had) the game began.  
  
And so did the pranks. No, for once, NOT Fred and George-their lack of such could be blamed on their weekly supply of dungbombs from Zonko's arriving late-but from the ghosts. Ghosts that had spent the better half of the night snoozing as McGonagall admonished them, waking up every time her voice raised and then sinking back into stupidor once again.  
  
But McGonagall had made what for her was quite possibly the only unwise move of her career. She let the ghosts off with just a reprimanding. Furthermore, though she took Peeves' and Myrtle's wands-who wouldn't after seeing all calamities (the ghosts called it fun) they had caused?-McGonagall forgot to take Nick's. Actually, not so much forgot as Nick hid it as soon as Professor McGonagall had spotted the three ghosts next to the Gryffindor Common Room. Though, how Nick managed to hide such an object when he was transparent was never apparent (not that either Myrtle or Peeves was all that keen to know.)  
  
At last free of McGonagall, the ghosts were hidden underneath the bleachers, having a hasty chat. A hasty chat that would give the Gryffindor team, including Harry and Ron, who was now quite the Quidditch player (Lavender would argue literally and figuratively) enough time to win the Quidditch match before the "misfortunate accident" occured.  
  
Waving his wand from underneath the bleachers and poking quite a few of the students sitting down as he did so, Nick watched in satisfaction as the result of his work took place. The game now over and Gryffindor having won, the Gryffindors in the stands were going wild with delight, screaming, shouting, and just generally acting like a gigantic swarm of fans at a football match, though only Dean would have made such a comparison between the two.  
  
Amid all the hubub and excitement, Hermione made her way down the bleachers to Harry and Ron in the field to congragulate them. What transpired next was nothing like congragulations. The words "hey, good job, you two" was barely out of Hermione's mouth before the found herself kissing Harry. Not one of those stupid, bend you over, ankle popping kind of kisses, it was more akin to two birds accidentally bumping beaks. It lasted for all of one second before both pulled away and looked at each other in shock.  
  
Hermione was not so much in shock as Harry was. She had certainly had enough wierd events happen against her will yesterday to know that something like this was coming. Not wanting to examine Harry's face-because she was sure it must have been every bit as emberassed as hers and she didn't want to make it any more so-looked instead at the throng of exuberant Gryffindors, jumping up and down in the field.  
  
Luckily, none of them seemed to have noticed a thing, they were too caught up in the results of the game. Uhoh. Make that none of them noticed except for Ron, who was staring at them both with more shock than either of them had combined.  
  
******  
  
Still underneath the bleachers, Myrtle glared at Nick.  
  
"You, you..that is soo unfair! We never said anything about making them kiss!"  
  
In a sudden movement, she grabbed the wand from Nick and waved it at Lavender, who in response to the spell, walked right over and kissed Ron-not that she wouldn't have on her own, based on her already exsisting feelings.  
  
"There." Myrtle smiled. "Now Hermione will be jealous and he'll be jealous and then they'll-"  
  
"-Argue for two hours straight?" guessed Peeves.  
  
"Probably. Which leads to kissing and making up."  
  
Nick shook his head at Myrtle's doubtful strategy. Hermione and Harry, Hermione and Harry, Hermione and Harry he thought fiercly.  
  
*******  
  
Ron and Lavender broke it off just as fast as Hermione and Harry, though from the expression on Lavender's face, that wasn't all her doing. Ron didn't waste a second in walking purposely off towards Hermione to apologize..and intending to tell her something else, as well. So was Harry.  
  
And George hadn't yet given up on her either. Or wouldn't if she perhaps followed him as she skulked off to the library (he too had seen the kiss between her and Harry.) But none of them need have said a thing-for Hermione had already made up her own mind and would act accordingly.  
  
*****Ending #1-Harry********  
  
Harry watched as Ron came up to him, but Ron was not the one he needed to adress first. He searched for the right words to say, never having been who had them in abudant supply. "Uh..Herm..I didn't mean to-"  
  
"I know."  
  
I wanted to, thought Harry to himself, even though that kiss hadn't exactly been of his own free will.  
  
Any further conversation was cut off by Ron. "Honestly," he panted out of breath, "that wasn't what it looked-"  
  
"Oh yes it was." Neither Ron nor Harry could tell from Hermione's voice if she was upset or simply being matter of a fact.  
  
"No it wasn't!" Ron looked at Harry apologetically. "Can't you at least give me the benifit of a doubt? You don't see me going on about, well, you know, do you?"  
  
Hermione's and Harry's guilty faces showed they knew what Ron was talking about all too well. Why, thought Hermione unhappily. Why does Ron have to be understanding now of all times? An angry Ron was dangerous, but a reasonable Ron was ten times worse..and ten times as stubborn, not good for what Hermione was prepared to tell him-for she knew what he was going to try and tell her.  
  
"'Mione, can I talk to you alone for a moment?"  
  
"No," said Hermione firmly. "I know what you are going to ask, and it's no both ways."  
  
Harry, taking the hint that this conversation really didn't involve him, went off a ways. Ron turned the color of a poppy. He didn't look too upset, only confused. It was that that convinced Hermione that the choice she had made was a good one, even if it turned out to be not the right one-hey, whoever said life had to be composed of all the right choices, especially when you were only fifteen?  
  
"But why?" asked Ron.  
  
"You don't like me," stated Hermione, fairly sure of herself. "You like Lavender."  
  
Harry knew he shouldn't be listening to all of this, but really, it was hard not to when you were only a few feet away-and besides, something inside him warned him against moving out of hearing distance altogether (his conscience must have taken after Lavender's.)  
  
"Listen, just because of one stupid signature in a book--"  
  
"It was written in your favorite color."  
  
"What has that got to do with anything?"  
  
Hermione gave a half smile and shrugged. "You're right. Absolutely nothing. Except that it's her favorite color as well."  
  
Ron rolled his eyes. "This is ridiculous! What, because we have one thing in common, we're suddenly supposed to be destined for each other?"  
  
"There's more to it than that."  
  
"That kiss back there with Lavender didn't mean-"  
  
Hermione cocked her head to one side and studied Ron. "You know, you always were a terrible liar. I've known that ever since you made your first excuse for forgetting your homework."  
  
"Well, it worked, didn't it?" said Ron defensively.  
  
"Only because Professor Binns was napping standing up again and thought you were Remus come to give the gnome pork."  
  
Hermione willed herself to look straight at Ron, which was not an easy thing to do given the circumstances. "You do like her, you're just too stubborn to admit it."  
  
"I am no-!" Ron suddenly broke off in the middle of his statement. "You really don't mind?"  
  
"No."  
  
"You sure? I mean, 'Mione, you deserve someone-"  
  
"Ron," broke in Hermione impatiently. "We're only fifteen, not twenty. This isn't the end of hte wolrd. Now go catch up with Lavender before it's too late to find her."  
  
"I will always like you more than Lavender-"  
  
"-Oh, of course, as a friend. Who else you going to argue with? And please don't say your lifelike figurine of the star of the Chudley Cannons."  
  
Ron grinned. "Well, there's always Harry-"  
  
Harry, who had gotten fed up with waiting for the conversation to finish, walked back over just in time to catch the last two comments.  
  
"Appreciate the offer, but I want to have my hearing stay intact, thanks all the same."  
  
"Ron! Hey, Ron!" Lavender could be heard yelling over the crowd. Ron gave Harry and Hermione a sheepish smile.  
  
"I think that's my cue to leave."  
  
After Ron had gone off to talk to Lavender (who's worried look was slowly changing into a smile as she did so) Harry turned to Hermione.  
  
"Right. Need I restate again that Ron likes you?"  
  
"He doesn't," said Hermione, wondering who would try to convince her of the fact next...Dumbledore himself?  
  
"He just thinks he does," she finished, looking at her toes instead of Harry and trying to curb a grin that was coming to her face from who knew where for who knew what reason, though Hermione could more than hazard a guess as to both.  
  
"Oh. In that case." Harry took a deep breath, feeling as if he was preparing himself for the World Quidditch Cup. "Can I talk to you in private for a minute?"  
  
The words were nearly identical to Ron's, and Harry mentally cursed his inapptitude. Gah. Why did he always have to get so..awkward..when it came to things like this?  
  
Hermione, however, didn't seem to notice or mind, and she smiled at Harry's use of the word "private". "Among a crowd of people?"  
  
"Why not? I have somewhere no one will bother us." Harry lead her towards the underside of the bleachers (not right next to where the ghosts were conviently hiding out, thank goodness!)  
  
"So.." started Hermione.  
  
"So..."  
  
"What did you want to talk about?"  
  
"Well, you see, it's-" began Harry, happy to be able to say the words he had been planning at last, even if not quite in the way he had planned.  
  
Two very loud, obnoxious giggles interrupted Harry. Giggles that could only belong to two loud, obnoxious (at the moment, anyway) people; Padma and Parvati.  
  
"I think we've got an audience," Harry whispered to Hermione.  
  
"Obviously so," she whispered back. "How are we supposed to get rid of them? The only thing that diverts their attention are gossip and boys. And I can't very well wave you in their faces, can I?"  
  
"I have a plan." And Harry whispered the rest of his plan in Hermione's ear, even quieter than he had been whispering previously. She nodded her agreement and the "plan" went into action.  
  
"Hermione, how could you? Cheating on me with Ron! I'm so devastated, I think I'll go jump off a cliff."  
  
"No, no Harry! Don't! Throw yourself into the lake instead. I don't want any memory of the grief you have caused me!"  
  
"I will! And just so you know, you broke my heart and I will never be the same again-"  
  
"That's obvious when you're threatening suicide. Kind of hard to be the same when you're a corpse," whispered Hermione and Harry, realizing his error, quickly tried to cover it up by continuing.  
  
"Errm..I mean, it's all your fault! I love you!"  
  
"Right," said Harry, switching to his normal voice and feeling a bit abashed at what he had just gone through with. "I think that got rid of them. Can't believe they fell for it." His pale face turned slighty red as he looked at Hermione. It was now or never.  
  
"Umm..'Mione? That last part was true."  
  
"You love me?" asked Hermione, then thought that she should have simply said liked. The term love, well, just seemed a bit too strong when you weren't yet out of school.  
  
Harry's face went even redder. "Umm..ermm.."  
  
Love is never an easy word for a guy to say. Especially not when you're fifteen and that word is more likely to be associated with your favorite Quidditch team. But Harry needn't have worried over what to say-Hermione solved that matter when she gave him a tenative kiss. Of course, she and him were both nervous over the whole thing (plus Hermione was still dead tired from being up so late the night before) so she ended up kissing his ear. Accidents happen.  
  
Harry smiled at her. "We need to work on your aim."  
  
"And yours." Hermione smiled back, a becoming mischevious glint to her eye. "Practice makes perfect." Cliches never seemed to sound cliche in this type of situation.  
  
"Good thing, that. I've got much to look forward to in the future, then." And Harry kissed her again-luckily no ear was involved this time. Afterwards, it was a magical moment. He stared at her. She stared at him...  
  
and hit her head on the bleachers as she moved backwards a step, causing her to fall face first towards the grass. Harry leaned forward to catch her and save her fall, but succeeded only in falling over himself as he too bumped his head. So they both toppled over, her in his arms. The perfect beginning for the perfect couple, right?  
  
And a yard or so away (not so far away as to not see what was going on, though) Myrtle keeled right over beside Nick and Peeves. Things had not gone the way she had thought they would. She had lost the bet-and her chances of joining stalker's anonymous (Harry would have been quite "fun" to follow around.)  
  
"Pimply wimply fainted!" said Peeves, barely hiding his laugh behind a pretend distressed look.  
  
"Get the smelling salts," stated Nick.  
  
"No, better yet, get Lee," said Peeves.  
  
That was it. Him and Peeves both broke off in guffaws while Nick conjured a water bucket with his wand and dumped it over Myrtle's head.  
  
"My complexion is ruined!" she wailed.  
  
"Always has been," muttered Peeves.  
  
Ignoring him, Nick beamed. "Hah! That'll show you to respect my wise choice. Didn't I tell you they would get together? Welll, didn't I?"  
  
Myrtle rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't respect you if you dressed like Fudge himself."  
  
"What about Dumbledore?"  
  
"Even less. I still have reaccuring nightmares of him in violet."  
  
"Agreed," said Peeves seriously. "Violet is so not his color."  
  
"No, not violet clothes."  
  
Nick looked at Myrtle in shock. "You DIDN'T!"  
  
"Didn't do what?"  
  
Nick shook his head at Myrtle. "Honestly, spying on the headmaster in his PJS. That's awful!"  
  
"No,no, not pjs!"  
  
Peeves snickered. "Loungerie?"  
  
Myrtle glared. "No, I'm talking about violet suntan lotion."  
  
Nick glared right back accusingly at Myrtle. "How would you know about that? Did you follow Dumbledore to Bermuda last summer?"  
  
"I..ermm..well.. I wanted to get a tan?" lied Myrtle.  
  
"STALKER!" yelled Peeves.  
  
"Oh shut up. At least I'm not the one with pictures of McGonagall hidden underneath my matress."  
  
Peeves was horrified. "But how--? I mean, nevermind."  
  
"You know, there are more couples we could pair off," said Nick, bringing the subject back to the bet as he collected his money from a crestfallen Myrtle and Peeves. "How about Parvati and Seamus?"  
  
"Nah, he's dead gone on Padma," said Myrtle.  
  
"I bet you twenty galleons he likes Parvati and in addition, another ten that he asks her to the Yule Ball."  
  
"I'll do more than that. Not only do I say that he and Padma go to the Yule Ball together, I bet another ten galleons that five years from now, him and Padma end up marrying," said Myrtle.  
  
Nick rolled his eyes. "I doubt it."  
  
"You're on!" said Peeves. " I bet moony swoony will go with shamrock boy within a month."  
  
"Wait a minute, we don't have any money left to bet with..." began Myrtle.  
  
"How about toilet paper?" asked Myrtle brightly.  
  
"What would I need with toilet paper?" scoffed Nick.  
  
Myrtle grinned and whispered something in Nick's ear while Nick took one look at Peeves and could not manage to stifle his laugh. Peeves put his hands on his hips.  
  
"And just what is so funny?"  
  
"You're right," whispered Nick to Myrtle. "It would make a perfect gag. "  
  
*******Ending 2-Ron*****  
  
"Umm..'Mione, I didn't mean to.." began Ron as soon as he reached her.  
  
"I know. Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of Harry. We're all friends and what are secrets between friends?"  
  
"This is about Lavender's name in my book, isn't it?"  
  
"Ooh, that's real keen of you to guess, but that's only part of it."  
  
"You think I took your notebook to cheat, is that it? I didn't! Just because I don't spend all my time behind a wall of books.."  
  
"How would you know how I spend my time? You're always too busy ignoring me."  
  
"Me ignoring you? You're ignoring me!"  
  
Ron turned to Harry for support. "Isn't that right, Harry?"  
  
"Well, really-"  
  
"Don't you try to force him to take sides!"  
  
"Me? It because of you that, that..."  
  
"What, Scabbers is now on life support?"  
  
"DON'T YOU DARE MAKE FUN OF SCABBER'S DELICATE CONDITION!" yelled Ron, going purple in the face.  
  
Harry stared at both of his seething friends, knowing he had to do something. "Right, I'll just be leaving now-you two carry on argueing."  
  
"We aren't argueing! We're disagreeing!" yelled both Ron and Hermione.  
  
"Exactly why I'm leaving before you start argueing." And with that , Harry vanished into the crowd, stopping only for a brief moment to turn around and talk to Hermione over his shoulder.  
  
"Oh, and 'Mione, I know he deserves it, but don't turn Ron into a pumpkin. And you two get back before midnight or I'll have to borrow a pair of earmuffs from Neville to get any sleep."  
  
"No problem, fairy godmother..and thanks," she added, breaking from her blazing row with Ron to smile at Harry (this, of course, made Ron all the more aggrivated.)  
  
"For what?"  
  
"For not adding a third voice to the fight me and Ron are having."  
  
Ron opened his mouth to protest, but Harry spoke first, shrugging as he did so.  
  
"What can I say, I'm the only sensible one of us three."  
  
"If you call getting yourself drenched in a water fountain sensible," muttered Ron after Harry had walked off.  
  
"Ahem," said Hermione. "Now where were we?"  
  
"Argueing over nothing."  
  
"No, we weren't! You kissing Lavender is hardly nothing!"  
  
Hermione was exasperated. How on earth was she ever suppposed to get the point across to Ron?  
  
"Well I think it is!"  
  
"Well I don't!"  
  
"How come you don't think it's nothing if I do?"  
  
Hermione drew herself up, miffed. "Oh, what, now I have to think exactly like you too? In that case, I suggest you stick to talking to Scabbers."  
  
Ron shook his head, exasperated. How on earth was he ever supposed to get the point across to her?  
  
"Hermione," he said gently, in a tone of voice Hermione was not accustomed to hearing. "That's not what I'm talking about. If the kiss didn't mean anything to me, then why should it bother you?"  
  
Did he know? But it had escaped his attention all of last year. Why should he realize it all of a sudden? Or had he known all along of how she felt? Hermione wasn't ready to say exactly why it would bother her out loud, not yet..just not quite yet. She was sure Ron wouldn't listen.  
  
"Don't you tell me what to do or not do!"  
  
"I'm not," said Ron quite patiently. Hermione seemed not to realize the absolutely reversal of their roles. Now, she was the one yelling and Ron was the one trying to bring things back to reason. "You yourself said you were bothered."  
  
"No, I didn't. You just want me to be. Well, sorry to break it to you, but you can't have both."  
  
Ron rubbed his temples in another game imatation of Nick. "'Mione, what ARE you talking about?"  
  
Hermione whirled on him. "Isn't it obvious? Or are you really that oblivious?"  
  
"About what?"  
  
"About..about.."  
  
Unable to finish, Hermione turned away from Ron. " Look, if you really like Lavender, why don't you just go talk to her? Our little arguement can always be postponed. Not like it will matter if we forget what we're argueing about, anyway. We'll just find something new to argue about tomorrow."  
  
Without thinking, Ron put his hand on Hermione's shoulder. "Mione, what is the-" He broke off midsentence, thinking he probably shouldn't press her for the answer and pretend he didn't know what she would say when he thought he already did. He'd rather they stay friends than go and mess everything up when he heard her tell him the confirmation of his fears. Perhaps he should go after Lavender-at least he knew she'd like him back. Hermione, Ron was positive, never would.  
  
Just as positive as Hermione was that Ron would never listen.  
  
Silence, then, "What were we argueing about again, anyway?"  
  
Hermione felt the strange urge to smile, but hid it. "Oh, just forget it. You won't listen to me anyway."  
  
"Why should I when you're not making any sense?"  
  
"You're the one that's not making sense!" yelled Hermione.  
  
"Me? How am I not making sense?"  
  
"Not by your words, by your actions."  
  
"Ugh. I give up! Talking to you is like running endlessly on a hamster wheel."  
  
"Leave it to you to use creative analogies."  
  
With that last stinging comment, Ron walked off himself, the midafternoon sun striking his hair, causing the lighter highlights in the red strands to turn to a peculiar sort of honey color and Hermione to catch her breath. She wanted to tell him..but she just didn't have the guts.  
  
She may not have had the guts, but luckily she had the intuition. Hermione stood in shock, the lone figure on the Quidditch field for only a second, before without even thinking about where her feet were taking her, walked at a rapid pace and then broke out into a full out jog, trying to catch up with Ron.  
  
"Wait, where are you off to?"  
  
"What do you care? And no, Harry's not with me, in case you're wondering."  
  
"Ron," pleaded Hermione, at her wit's end, but it was too late, Ron had already dissapeared around the corner and through one of Hogwart's many doors. That didn't stop Hermione from following him, though. Following him straight to the library, of all the unlikely places. Thank goodness Madame Pince wasn't there-she would have thrown a fit if she could have heard the shouting match that followed next.  
  
Hermione sank into a chair beside Ron, who promptly crossed one knee over the other. However, as soon as Hermione did the same, he switched to the opposite knee.  
  
"Ron," said Hermione comfortingly, but Ron would not be comforted. "You know, I have every bit as much reason to be furious with you as you do with me. You did kiss Lavender," she pointed out.  
  
"So? You kissed Harry."  
  
"Well, as stupid as it sounds, I didn't mean to."  
  
"What, your lips just happened to bump into each other in the dark?"  
  
Hermione remained tight lipped, not saying a word.  
  
"Well," said Ron from out of nowhere. " I didn't mean to kiss Lavender either." He sighed. "I don't like her. Never did. That signature in my book that you borrowed-she wrote it."  
  
"Oh." That one simple word could not possibly convey how relieved Hermione felt, the lightheadedness and happiness that flooded her. "Well, that explains why it was written in bright pink, then."  
  
Ron winced. "I've tried everything to erase it, but nothing seems to work. Even tried putting one of my Chudley Cannon pictures over it, but the words still showed through. It looked like Pip Malloy had her name tatooed on his forehead."  
  
"Come to think of it, there are similarities between the two," said Hermione. "They both like to stare at their reflections in their laquered nails."  
  
Ron was indignant. "Pip Malloy is one of the best seekers in the world. He does not paint his fingernails."  
  
"Does to."  
  
"Does not."  
  
"Does to."  
  
"Does--oh, hang it." The corners of Ron's mouth began to turn up and Hermione felt her spirit rise with his smile. Perhaps he would listen, if only she could find the right way to form the words...  
  
"Why do we always argue so much, anyway?"  
  
"We aren't argueing."  
  
"Are too."  
  
"Are not."  
  
"Are--"  
  
Hermione and Ron laughed in unision. "I don't know why we argue so much," admitted Hermione.  
  
"Maybe because the only thing we have in common is having nothing in common," suggested Ron.  
  
"So then why are we friends?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
Ron realized his mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. "No, I didn't mean it like tha-"  
  
"I knew it, I just knew it! You're only friends with me because I'm smart or something and can get you out of trouble, is that it?"  
  
"No, not a-"  
  
"Oh, I should have realized it. Whenever you or Harry gets in trouble, who's the one who always has to cover for it? Me!"  
  
"Now wait a minute, Hermione, if you'll just listen, I have some-"  
  
"Remember when you tried to make a muggle pop tart and ended up setting it on fire? Who was the one who got blamed for mixing you up over which was the toaster and which was the microwave? Me!"  
  
"'Mione, if you'll please-"  
  
"And than that other time when Harry and you accidentally locked yourselves in the boy's bathroom with the broken, overflowing toilet in the middle of winter, who had to come running in the middle of the night with sleeping bags to sneak under the crack in the door so you wouldn't die of hypothermia? Me!"  
  
"'Mione, that's not true at all."  
  
"Oh, right. So you don't even think I'm helpful? When your old wand broke and you couldn't afford a new one, where do you think those twenty galleons that just happened to show up under your bed came from? The tooth fairy?"  
  
"No.. I mean yes... I mean no. I mean.. 'Mione, I likeyoubecauseyouryou."  
  
It came out all in a rush and not at all as Ron had planned (and boy, had he ever planned. Why, if his mirror hadn't been so critisising, he probably would have practiced in front of it) but still, Ron felt a sense of relief that at last he had spoken about the matter.  
  
Hermione looked furious. So furious, that for a minute Ron seriously considered hiding behind the back of his chair. That or jumping out the glass window.  
  
She walked towards him menacingly. "Well, I hate you too, Ronald Weasley! You horrible, little, slimy-"  
  
All of a sudden, Hermione stopped mistep and blinked. She looked at Ron's face and blinked again, the words he had just said finally catching up with her. "Did you just say what I think you said?"  
  
Ron instinctively backed up another step. "That depends on what you think I said."  
  
With that, Hermione's face did a complete three hundred and sixty degree change of expression as she gave a squeal of delight, and hugged a very flummoxed Ron around the middle.  
  
"I like you too," she muttered into his shirt. Her face looked uncertain as she stared up at him. "You don't like me just because I'm smart, do you?"  
  
"No! I mean, you are, but like I said, I like you because you're you."  
  
Hermione grinned. "Explain."  
  
Ron fumbled for words. "Umm..well, you're beautiful and you're smart and funny and not just outside beautiful. Inside beautiful..."  
  
Hermione grinned even wider. "Okay, 'fess. Which book of poetry did you steal that last line from?"  
  
"No one. Been practicing that part of my speech for some time." Ron gave a frown. "Only problem is, I kinda forgot the rest of it..."  
  
"That's okay." Hermione raised her head and gave Ron a short kiss, not perfect by any means, but a promise of beginnings.  
  
Behind the nearest bookshelf, Myrtle forgot where she was and jumped right off the ladder in pure joy. Right into Nick's arms, who promptly fell over from the weight, a couple of books from the top of the shelf hitting him atop the head as well.  
  
"What was that for?" he asked grumpily.  
  
"They kissed, they kissed!"  
  
"Yeah, so? Everyone knows Madame Pince and Professor Binns have been dating secretly for yea-"  
  
Peeves hit Nick again over the head with a book. "Not them! She means Ron and Hermione!"  
  
"Ooh, I could dance!" said Myrtle happily.  
  
"Do us a favor," said Nick with a frown as he emptied out his pocket obligingly, handing Peeves and Myrtle the money owed. "Don't."  
  
Only two bookshelves away, Lee, Fred, and George had been witness to the whole scene and were giggling quietly over it. Yes, George had liked Hermione. Alot. But he wasn't about to let it get him down-he couldn't let anyone or anything get him down. His job was to cheer people up after all, wasn't it? Besides, it just didn't fit his personality to mope around for long. Life was too short to spend it all moping or being envious. Sure, he would be unhappy and upset-but that would be in private.  
  
But he couldn't hide that from Lee or his twin. "Sorry George," said Fred to him. "But hey, on the plus side, Angelina said Alicia's been asking about you and we all know about Lee and Katie. Maybe we can all go oh, I don't know--"  
  
"-On a date?" guessed Lee. Fred wrinkled his nose.  
  
"No, on a prank trip, genius."  
  
"With us, those two are pretty much the same," said George.  
  
"Well," said Fred as he continued to observe Ron and Hermione. "At least now the people in Australia can sleep in."  
  
"Not for long. Lavender's screaming when she finds out will be loud enough for all of them," said George.  
  
******Ending#3-George********  
  
Ron was coming near her to explain his kiss to Lavender, Harry was at that moment trying to explain his kiss to her, but Hermione's senses did not pay a wit of attention to them. Her eyes were on George as he broke away from his celebrating team mates and walked right past, his eyes straight ahead and his freckled face not showing anything, unusual in a face that was always so frank.  
  
But unfortunately for him, his eyes could not be so schooled. Hermione caught a flicker of them as he passed by and she knew. She knew he had seen her kiss Harry-and that for some reason or other, he had been serious the other night. If she had only known he wasn't joking...  
  
Hermione berated herself, not listening to the drone of Harry's voice. Don't you ever say if only. You control your life, not someone else. If you want to fix things, then go and fix them.  
  
And that was just what Hermione did, walking off in half a daze as Harry and Ron both called after her, puzzled as to where she was going and why. She would explain to them, of course. Later. She wasn't going to just walk off and leave them. Ever. Even if George did still like her, she wouldn't just forget about her friends, becoming all wrapped up in one person. That wasn't her style. No matter what, she would remain true to them as a friend. But nothing more no matter how much either of them wanted it. It just wouldn't work. One way or the other and their happy threesome of a friendship collapsed. Of course, that was without her feelings coming into consideration. Her feelings that went towards..  
  
Him. Which was exactly why she was running across the field in his shadow, exuberant with finally having sorted out her entangled emotions at last. Even when she lost sight of him, she did not give up, but went straight to the library on the strange hunch he might be there-a very strange hunch, considering she really did not think of the library as George's sort of place.  
  
Seeing the red hair falling across his face as he stared at his hands in his lap, Hermione gave a small smile, surprised to see him there. It was nice to know that perhaps the library was George's haven too. That perhaps they had more in common than she thought, and that perhaps...  
  
Well, that wasn't really a perhaps, it depended on her. All on her. Or so she felt.  
  
George looked up as she came near and his face deepened into something that to Hermione, seemed alien on his face. A frown. The usually talkative twin said nothing and for a few seconds, Hermione fidgeted as she stood, unconsiously twirling a peice of hair around her finger as she thought of words to say.  
  
"George, you know that kiss with Harry wasn't my doing."  
  
"Oh no, of course not. He just happened to have a magnet in his pocket, you just happened to be wearing a metal necklace, and viola, it was fatal attraction."  
  
"Well, it wasn't!"  
  
"I know," said George tonelessly.  
  
"And Ron kissed Lavender.."  
  
"I know."  
  
"I don't like Harry."  
  
"I know."  
  
Hermione threw up her hands. "Oh, will you cut it out? You sound like Professor Trelawnrey when she-"  
  
"Stares into that fishbowl she calls a crystal ball and tries to make a prediction? I-"  
  
"Don't you dare say you know, because you don''t." Hermione sighed. "You don't know the half of it..."  
  
George put his hands behind his head and relaxed in his chair. "Then tell me." He gave her a grin, but it was a pale imitation of the real one that usually graced his face. "Don't worry, if I start to fall asleep, my own snoring will wake me up."  
  
"It's simple. I don't like Ron."  
  
"You said that already."  
  
"Will you please be quiet? Just let me get through this, okay?"  
  
"Mum's the word."  
  
"Good. Anyway, I don't like Ron. Or Harry."  
  
George looked at her. "You stalked me across the quidditch field and up three flights of stairs to tell me that?? Why? I'm not the writer for Witch's Weekly, no matter how similiar I may look to him."  
  
He was making things hard. On purpose, Hermione was sure of it. Not that he didn't have every right to. How could she have thought he was joking?  
  
Maybe because she didn't know him that well yet, maybe because she had thought that joking was all there was too him. But there was more, she could see that even now, even if she'd only caught a glimpse; a peice of the puzzle to understanding who he was.  
  
"Similiar, my great grandmother. You wouldn't look similiar to him unless you decided to steal Lavender's rainbow gelly belly quills and write all over yourself with them."  
  
"Been there, done that." George wiggled his eyebrows at her. "What else can I do when I run out of paper and Professor Binns wants us to take notes?"  
  
"Use that thing filled with cobwebs and rust that's otherwise known as your memory," said Hermione. She could see George was determined to avoid the real reason he had come up to the library, the real reason he had said what he said yesterday. Well, she wasn't about to let him.  
  
"Umm..George? What was that all about yesterday?" she finally ventured to ask, plopping down on a couch beside him and refusing to look into his face for fear of what she'd find there. Would he simply blow it off as a joke? Or worse yet, would he tell her that the things he had said yesterday really were a joke?  
  
"Do you really like me?"  
  
George's green eyes sought out her own and he stared at her, not frowning in the odd way he had when she'd entered the library, but not smiling either. For once, he looked serious and this gave Hermione hope. Maybe, just maybe...  
  
"At least I didn't get slapped in the face."  
  
It hadn't been a joke. His voice said that, as did his eyes, as much as she tried to lower her head away from their searching view. What was he looking for in her face? It half scared her.  
  
"Look," Hermione whispered. "I'm-"  
  
"You're sorry and you really want us to be friends. Look, save it for Ron and Harry. You don't want to overuse your speech. Only problem with me is, we were never friends before to begin with. And mutual aquaintances just doesn't have the same ring, does it?"  
  
Hermione's face flushed. "Don't you make me feel guilty about all of this. Of course we weren't friends. We never talked much before, how could we be? Through telepathy?"  
  
"Are you saying..you think we could be friends?"  
  
Hermione gathered all of her collective courage and shook her head. "No."  
  
George gave her a smile. She wished he would stop grinning and smiling. It only made her feel worse because she could see he was only doing it to cover up his other emotions of the moment. She wanted him to smile, but she wanted it to be a REAL smile. "You know, if you were any more blunt, you would have hit me over the head with a hammer."  
  
"I'll save your time by telling you Ron has gone up to his dorms."  
  
This was it. If he wouldn't, then she would have to..  
  
"Oh, shut up."  
  
George gaped at her, not used to hearing Hermione use such strong vocabulary unless it was with Ron in the midst of an arguement. For some reason, being put on a parellel with his brother irked him. Was he just another Ron to her?  
  
His silent question was answered as Hermione leaned forward in her own chair, put her hands gently on his shoulders and kissed him.  
  
"From now on," said Hermione, looking at George (who still hadn't quite stopped gaping) "I'll do the explaining."  
  
That was when Hermione happened to look over George's shoulder, out the glass window, and see none other than two resentful faces staring back at her; Lavender and Parvati. The library being on the second floor, they were both standing on a ladder, spying on George and Hermione.  
  
Hermione had no time to worry over trying to shoo them off, however, as she only saw their shocked faces for a fraction of a second (they obviously hadn't been expectng her to kiss George) before both fell backward, ladder and all, into the snow on the ground.  
  
"They make good snow angels," said Hermione as she watched Lavender and Parvati flat on their backs as they waved their legs and arms to try and stand up amid the deep drift.  
  
George gave a mock shiver. "More like devils."  
  
"Now George, that's not very nice..."  
  
"What, why do you think they always wear so many ribbons in their hair? Got to hide their horn-"  
  
"GEORGE!"  
  
"Okay, okay," responded George as he leaned in to kiss her again.  
  
Hermione moved over to sit beside him on the same chair and for awhile they just sstayed like that, her head on his shoulder, in silence, a very comfortable and satisfied silence. Hermione was once again pleasantly surprised. She hadn't thought George would be the kind to appreciate such a silence, however temporary. It was nice to simply sit there, surrounded by him. Hermione could hear his heart thumping against his rib cage. Mmm.. very nice.  
  
"George?" asked Hermione, wanting to find out more about him, curious to try and get to know him as well as she knew Ron and Harry.  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"What are you thinking?"  
  
"That my stomach feels exactly like it did the day Charlie accidentally levitated me unto the roof of The Burrow."  
  
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Kissing makes you dizzy?"  
  
George smiled and this time, it was a true smile, one that made Hermione feel happy and several other things all at once. "No. Lee and Fred's going by on broomsticks outside the window and giving me the thumbs up sign makes me dizzy."  
  
*********  
  
The ghosts, hidden behind a bookshelf, instantly began bemoaning their situation.  
  
"Oh, It's the end of the world as we know it," began Peeves merrily, waving his arms about and causing both Myrtle and Nick to give him irritated looks.  
  
"It certainly will be if you don't SHUT UP!" said Myrtle.  
  
"Knew I never should have given him a radio for his birthday," muttered Nick.  
  
"Well, look on the positive side, at least we didn't lose any money," pointed out Myrtle to Nick and Peeves.  
  
"Didn't gain any either," muttered Peeves.  
  
"You know," said Nick thoughtfully. "Us ghosts really should start a protest to get pay. I mean, being a house ghost isn't easy. All that work and umm..."  
  
"Being forced to room with Professor Binns and his stinky feet after he takes his shoes off," pointed out Peeves.  
  
"And forced to watch prefects in the bathroom and try not to trip over all the soap they leave lying on the floor," added Myrtle.  
  
"VERY trying, I'm sure," grinned Nick. "No, but really, we should start a movement of protest. Even the rusty sets of armor get more money than we do, what with all those people that keep using them as secret piggy banks and then forgetting about their stach of money within a month."  
  
"I'm thinking twelve dollars a day, what do you think?"  
  
"No, nine sounds better. That would be exactly enough to get a subscription to Witch's Weekly and Wicked Wizards," said Myrtle.  
  
"No, no. Eighteen!"  
  
While the ghosts were argueing, they failed to see both Seamus and Dean, who were watching them with much amusement.  
  
"Hey, how much you wanna bet Myrtle gets with Nick before the month is out?" whispered Lavender to Parvati.  
  
"No way. Look at the way Peeves keeps on floating over Myrtle's head like that. Definite sign of attraction. I bet you say, ten galleons, that he professes his undying love to her in a bathtub."  
  
Lavender giggled. "I'll double that wager!"  
  
"In a bathtub? Can do." Parvati's eyes twinkled merrily as she pulled out her wand from behind her back and muttered a spell at Peeves and Myrtle, who instantly vanished, much to Nick's surprise.  
  
Lavender glared at Parvati. "Hey, that's not fair!"  
  
Parvati grinned. "Hey, you never said no magic."  
  
Lavender grinned back. "Alright, magic allowed then. It'll make it more exciting. Where did you send Myrtle and Peeves, anyway?"  
  
Parvati shrugged. "Wherever the nearest bathtub is."  
  
********  
  
One mere floor away, Myrtle and Peeves looked up from the metal confines of their bathtub, both squirming about in the small, confined space to try and escape only to hear the door creak open as they found themselves staring at none other than...  
  
Snape in a bathrobe?  
  
The screams were luckily drowned out as both Myrtle and Peeves, in their hurry to get out of the tub, slipped on the slippery side of it, and fell right back in.  
  
There were far worse sights than Dumbledore in violet suntan lotion, after all.  
  
*********  
  
And Hermione and George lived happily after..until George began going to SPEW meetings and came to love the house elves so much he decided to transform into one-aww, who am I kidding? It was more like Neville's spell when he was trying to teach Trevor how to carol backfired and hit George in the stomach, turning into an elf. Well, sort of.  
  
Unfortunately, the spell went wrong there too. George was stuck with green hair, wearing just an apron and a tea cozy. Not that Hermione seemed to mind. It was half an hour before she told Professor McGonagall.  
  
Things did not change between George and Hermione. He still hated SPEW. Hermione still couldn't abide how he didn't work his hardest on his schoolwork, not as much as he had potential for, anyway, or how he was always playing pranks. Yet, he was subtly influencing her as she was him. Subtly influencing as in "dungbombs are cool!" and "oh look George, if you study chemistry, it'll help you make your products for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes even better!"  
  
They were complete opposites and completely happy that way. After all, opposites attract, don't they? ( Of course, when people said this, no one mentioned George's and Hermione's newest invention-now that she was Weasley's Wizard Wheeze's newest member- of magnetic canary creams.)  
  
******THE END!!!!******  
  
----  
  
A/N=Have I converted you to Hermione/George?? (well, you can't blame me for trying:P) Well, if you have any interest in this couple whatsoever, please check out the Dungbombs and SPEW yahoo club at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SS_Dungbombs_and_Spew/  
  
and join if you can!  
  
Geez, that was looong! (well, it was if you read all three endings..*hinthint*:)) 


End file.
